The Relationship between Mission Statement and Firms’ Performance

After two decades of research, the clear relationship between a mission statement and a firm’s performance is not found yet. Past research has demonstrated the meaningful relationship between the mission statement and the performance. Some of these studies, however, have indicated there is no meaningful relationship between the mission statement and the performance. The aim of this paper is to identify the relationship between the mission statement components and the performance components. Moreover, it tries to help managers to state high quality of the mission statement in their firms. Six-component mission statement was developed to measure the completeness of firm’s mission statement, and the BSC was used so as to measure the firms’ performance. The BSC includes four dimensions: financial, customer, internal process and learning and growth. In this research, field research technique was applied, and questionnaires were used in order to gather data. The statistical population was 35 firms. Totally, 1400 questionnaires were passed out, 40 questionnaires in each firm, out of which 1230 questionnaires were returned. SPSS 18 was utilized to analyze the data. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between the components of the mission statement and some of the performance components. The most significant positive relationship was found between the purpose and the financial component, and the least significant positive relationship was found between the vision and the internal presses. In addition, the financial dimension was related to the all the mission components. As a result, improving firm mission statement will improve financial performance, and strategic managers should devote extreme attention to this issue.  

The Relationship between Mission Statement and Firms’ Performance Keywords:

Mission statement , Firm Performance , BSC