Looking for the value of mission statements: a meta‐analysis of 20 years of research

Sebastian Desmidt · Anita A. Prinzie · Adelien Decramer

169 citations0/0 files storedManagement Decision

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Organizational Strategy and Culture Leadership and Management in Organizations Management and Organizational Practices

Abstract

Purpose After two decades of research, the effect of a mission statement on an organization's performance is still unclear. In order to address these shortcomings, a research project via the setting‐up of this paper seeks to identify all empirical studies addressing the mission statement‐financial performance relation, analyze how the mission statement‐financial performance relation is operationalized, and aggregate the findings of the identified studies by means of a meta‐analysis. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review procedure was developed to identify all relevant articles and meta‐analytic procedures were used to calculate the effect size of the selected studies. Findings The study results indicate a small positive relation between mission statements and measures of financial organizational performance. However, additional analyses indicated that interstudy differences in measures significantly influenced the estimates (population effect sizes of the created subsamples ranged from 0.0808 to 0.4100). Research limitations/implications These contradictive findings stress the importance and impact of operationalization decisions in mission statement‐performance research, and provide paths for future practice‐oriented research. Originality/value This study is the first to assess the performance impact of one of the most popular management instruments, namely mission statements, by means of meta‐analytical techniques and, to evaluate the moderation effect of operationalization decisions on the cited relationship. Furthermore, by aggregating research on the mission statement‐performance relationship, a knowledge base was devised which provides normative advice on the characteristics of a “good” mission statement.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 169 citations exist upstream.

References

2003Towards a Methodology for Developing Evidence‐Informed Management Knowledge by Means of Systematic Review 2000Practical Meta-Analysis 1990A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of organizational commitment.1994Meta-Analytic Procedures for Social Research.2004Methods of Meta-Analysis 2004Networking and innovation: a systematic review of the evidence 1999A review and meta-analysis of country-of-origin research 2005Using knowledge within small and medium‐sized firms: A systematic review of the evidence

Cited by

2020Innovation in the 21st Century: Architectural Change, Purpose, and the Challenges of Our Time 2015Revisiting the link between mission statements and organizational performance in the non-profit sector: The mediating effect of organizational commitment 2019Reinventing the third mission of higher education in Germany: political frameworks and universities’ reactions 2015The third mission of universities: An investigation of the espoused values 2014MISSION STATEMENT THEORY AND PRACTICE: A CONTENT ANALYSIS AND NEW DIRECTION

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.