The Strategic Planning Process: The Link Between Mission Statement and Organizational Performance

Article Summary

The Strategic Planning Process: The link between Mission Statement and Organizational Performance

Kenneth W. Green Jr., Henderson State University

Bobby Medlin, Henderson State University

The following is a synopsis of an article written by Kenneth W. Green and Bobby Medlin. This study draws on many works to investigate the link (if any) between an organization’s mission statement and their organization’s financial performance. Any organization with an active strategic planning process reviews their mission as a pathway to their desired goals and objectives. The article begins by introducing the importance of an organization’s mission statement to the internal, as well as external stakeholders. The main purpose of this article was to give the reader, the ability to reflect on the strategic planning process, which includes a mission statement. It is a mission statement that gives the organization target goals on how to be successful and remain robust. Those in support, as in Pearce and David (1987), compared mission statements of higher financial performing Fortune 500 firms to those of lower financial performing companies. In addition, Germain and Cooper (1990) found that firms that have customer service missions are more likely to seek input from customers and are also more likely to develop and maintain customer service measures. However, other works concluded there was no link between mission statements and outstanding performance within an organization. Measurement scales were developed due to the variance of the review of the literature. The purpose was to score the quality and completeness of an organization’s mission statement and its degree of organizational performance (Green & Medlin, 2003). The scale included Wheelen and Hunger’s (2000) nine criteria which were condensed to