mission statement
(noun)
A declaration of the overall goal or purpose of an organization.
Examples of mission statement in the following topics:
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The Mission Statement
- A mission statement defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or enterprise.
- A mission statement defines the purpose of a company or organization.
- Effective mission statements start by articulating the organization's purpose.
- Mission statements often include the following information:
- Outline the appropriate content necessary to construct a comprehensive mission statement
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The Overall Strategy
- (Often a "Vision Statement" and a "Mission Statement" may encapsulate the vision and mission. )
- For example, the charity above might have a mission statement as "providing jobs for the homeless and unemployed. "
- Organizations sometimes summarize goals and objectives into a mission statement and/or a vision statement.
- Others begin with a vision and mission and use them to formulate goals and objectives.
- Many people mistake the vision statement for the mission statement, and sometimes one is simply used as a longer term version of the other.
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The Importance of Strategy
- Strategic management is critical to organizational development as it aligns the mission and vision with operations.
- Strategy is inherently linked to a company's mission statement and vision; these elements constitute the core concepts that allow a company to execute its goals.
- This is particularly true in public companies, where profitability and maximizing shareholder value are the company's central mission.
- The initial task in strategic management is to compile and disseminate the organization's vision and mission statement.
- It involves specifying the organization's mission, vision, and objectives; developing policies and plans to achieve these objectives; and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans.
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Core Culture
- ., stories, logos, symbols, branding, mission statement, and office environment).
- Values are explicitly and observably stated in organizational literature (i.e., the employee handbook and mission statement), but also implicitly executed in individual behaviors.
- While it is observable when the CEO makes a public statement for shareholders or when the promotional team writes a press release, it is also derived directly from discussions of what the core culture is.
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Communicating Organizational Culture
- Some of the most critical of these are structure, hierarchy, mission and vision statements, employee handbooks, hiring processes, and employee training and initiation.
- With many diverse tools for communicating culture comes the challenge of aligning each perspective for consistency of message: for instance, the employee training program must emphasize the same values as the mission statement and must match the executive mandate for organizational structure and design.
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Defining Values
- If the managers of a business create a mission statement, they have likely decided what values they want their company to project to the public.
- The mission statement can help them seek out candidates whose personalities match these values, which can help reduce friction in the workplace and foster a positive work environment.
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Fulfilling the Planning Function
- The key components of strategic planning include an understanding of the firm's vision, mission, values, and strategies.
- (Often a "vision statement" and a "mission statement" may encapsulate the vision and mission. )
- For example, a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement that reads "A World without Poverty."
- Mission: It defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or an enterprise, succinctly describing why it exists and what it does to achieve its vision.
- For example, the charity above might have a mission statement as "providing jobs for the homeless and unemployed."
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The Impact of Culture on an Organization
- The paradigm: The mission statement, vision, ethics statement, and other overt definitions of culture.
- This means making sure that the mission statement, vision statement and overall strategy work together to create one strong culture statement.
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Managing Organizational Diversity
- This includes, but is not limited to, incorporating diversity initiatives into the mission and vision statements, the employee handbook, values statements, human resource policies, human resource training, and press releases.
- Having a separate diversity statement (similar to a mission statement) is also a good way to underline how an organization is committed to diversity.
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Differences Between Strategic Planning at Small Versus Large Firms
- Due to the wide variance and high volume of business, upper management needs stringent control systems embedded in the managerial strategy to enable predictability and conformity to mission, vision, and values.
- How does management create a strategy that doesn't confine these geographic regions (and lose localization) yet still maintains each region's alignment with the mission, vision, and branding of McDonald's?
- This requires fluidity in strategy while simultaneously maintaining a predetermined vision and mission statement.