Development Of Organizations Mission And Strategic Intent Mission Business Essay

A mission statement is a formal, short, written statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a sense of direction, and guide decision-making. It provides “the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are formulated.

All effective mission statements have in common critical components that clarify each organization’s purpose.

Mission statements often contain the following

Purpose and aim of the organization

The organization’s primary stakeholders: clients, stockholders, congregation, etc.

Responsibilities of the organization toward these stakeholders

Products and services offered

According to Hill, the mission statement consists of:

1. A statement containing the reason for using your product

2. A statement of some desired future state (vision)

3. A statement of the key values the organization is committed to

4. A statement of major goals

The mission statement can be used to resolve differences between business stakeholders. Stakeholders include: employees including managers and executives, stockholders, board of directors, customers, suppliers, distributors, creditors, governments (local, state, federal, etc.), unions, competitors, NGO’s, and the general public. Stakeholders affect, and are affected by, the organization’s strategies

Mission of the company communicates the firm’s core ideology and visionary goals. It should contain the company’s core values, core purpose, and visionary goals. When the visionary goals are selected, the core values and purpose of the firms should be discovered. Values and purpose are in the company already; the mission just describes them. In that case, the stakeholders are more likely to believe in the company’s mission.

Strategic Intent

Strategic Intent is a short, succinct, and inspiring statement of what the organization intends to become and to achieve at some point in the future, often stated in competitive terms. It refers to the category of intentions that are broad, all-inclusive and forward-thinking.  It is the image that a business must have of its goals before it sets out to reach them. It describes aspirations for the future, without specifying the means that will be used to achieve those desired ends.

A Strategic intent is the desired future state of the organisation. It is an aspiration around which a strategist,

perhaps a chief executive, might seek to focus the attention and energies of members of the organization.

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Management Structure

Significance of Mission and Vision to the organization

Setting up Goals

The major outcome of strategic road-mapping and strategic planning, after gathering all necessary information, is the setting of goals for the organization based on its vision and mission statement. A goal is a long-range aim for a specific period. It must be specific and realistic. Long-range goals set through strategic planning are translated into activities that will ensure reaching the goal through operational planning.

Sets up the Culture and Value of the Organization

A mission and vision of a company builds up the culture and values of the organization. For example if a mission of an organization is about bringing peace in the world its culture and value will also reflect it. Organizational culture is an idea in the field of Organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It has been defined as “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.”

This definition continues to explain organizational values, also known as “beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behaviour organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines, or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behaviour by employees in particular situations and control the behaviour of organizational members towards one another.

3dLeadership – Mission-Vision-Values

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Identifying your Organizational Values

“Our people are our most important asset.” You’ve heard these words many times, if you work in an organization. Yet how many organizations act as if they really believe these words? Not many. These words are the clear expression of a value, and values are visible through the actions people take, not their talk.

Values form the foundation for everything that happens in your workplace. If you are the founder of an organization, your values permeate the workplace. You naturally hire people who share your values. Whatever you value, will largely govern the actions of your workforce.

Organizational values define the acceptable standards which govern the behaviour of individuals within the organization. Without such values, individuals will pursue behaviours that are in line with their own individual value systems, which may lead to behaviours that the organization doesn’t wish to encourage.

In a smaller, co-located organization, the behaviour of individuals is much more visible than in larger, disparate ones. In these smaller groups, the need for articulated values is reduced, since unacceptable behaviours can be challenged openly. However, for the larger organization, where desired behaviour is being encouraged by different individuals in different places with different sub-groups, an articulated statement of values can draw an organization together.

Clearly, the organization’s values must be in line with its purpose or mission, and the vision that it is trying to achieve. So to summarize, articulated values of an organization can provide a framework for the collective leadership of an organization to encourage common norms of behaviour which will support the achievement of the organization’s goals and mission.

Sample Workplace Value-based Actions

If you value integrity and you experience a quality problem in your manufacturing process, you honestly inform your customer of the exact nature of the problem. You discuss your actions to eliminate the problem, and the anticipated delivery time the customer can expect. If integrity is not a fundamental value, you may make excuses and mislead the customer.

If you value and care about the people in your organization, you will pay for health insurance, dental insurance, retirement accounts and provide regular raises and bonuses for dedicated staff. If you value equality and a sense of family, you will wipe out the physical trappings of power, status, and inequality such as executive parking places and offices that grow larger by a foot with every promotion.

Whatever You Value Is What You Live in Your Organization

You know, as an individual, what you personally value. However, most of you work in organizations that have already operated for many years. The values, and the subsequent culture created by those values, are in place, for better or worse.

If you are generally happy with your work environment, you undoubtedly selected an organization with values congruent with your own. If you’re not, watch for the disconnects between what you value and the actions of people in your organization.

As an HR professional, you will want to influence your larger organization to identify its core values, and make them the foundation for its interactions with employees, customers, and suppliers. Minimally, you will want to work within your own HR organization to identify a strategic framework for serving your customers that is firmly value-based.

Strategic Framework

Every organization has a vision or picture of what it desires for its future, whether foggy or crystal clear. The current mission of the organization or the purpose for its existence is also understood in general terms.

The values members of the organization manifest in daily decision making, and the norms or relationship guidelines which informally define how people interact with each other and customers, are also visible. But are these usually vague and unspoken understandings enough to fuel your long term success? I don’t think so.

Every organization has a choice. You can allow these fundamental underpinnings of your organization to develop on their own with each individual acting in a self-defined vacuum. Or, you can invest the time to proactively define them to best serve members of the organization and its customers.

Many successful organizations agree upon and articulate their vision, mission or purpose, values, and strategies so all organization members can enrol in and own their achievement.

Next, read about the strategic planning framework to create your vision, mission, and values.

What are Values?

The following are examples of values. You might use these as the starting point for discussing values within your organization. Ambition, competency, individuality, equality, integrity, service, responsibility, accuracy, respect, dedication, diversity, improvement, enjoyment/fun, loyalty, credibility, honesty, innovativeness, teamwork, excellence, accountability, empowerment, quality, efficiency, dignity, collaboration, stewardship, empthy, accomplishment, courage, wisdom, independence, security, challenge, influence, learning, compassion, friendliness, discipline/order, generosity, persistency, optimism, dependability, flexibility

Why Identify and Establish Values?

Effective organizations identify and develop a clear, concise and shared meaning of values/beliefs, priorities, and direction so that everyone understands and can contribute. Once defined, values impact every aspect of your organization.

You must support and nurture this impact or identifying values will have been a wasted exercise. People will feel fooled and misled unless they see the impact of the exercise within your organization.

If you want the values you identify to have an impact, the following must occur.

People demonstrate and model the values in action in their personal work behaviors, decision making, contribution, and interpersonal interaction.

Organizational values help each person establish priorities in their daily work life.

Values guide every decision that is made once the organization has cooperatively created the values and the value statements.

Rewards and recognition within the organization are structured to recognize those people whose work embodies the values the organization embraced.

Organizational goals are grounded in the identified values.

Adoption of the values and the behaviours that result is recognized in regular performance feedback.

People hire and promote individuals whose outlook and actions are congruent with the values.

Only the active participation of all members of the organization will ensure a truly organization-wide, value-based, shared culture.

Corporate Governance

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions affecting the way a corporation (or company) is directed, administered or controlled. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many stakeholders involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. The principal stakeholders are the shareholders, the board of directors, employees, customers, creditors, suppliers, and the community at large.

An important theme of corporate governance is to ensure the accountability of certain individuals in an organization through mechanisms that try to reduce or eliminate the principal-agent problem. A related but separate thread of discussions focuses on the impact of a corporate governance system in economic efficiency, with a strong emphasis on shareholders’ welfare. There are yet other aspects to the corporate governance subject, such as the stakeholder view and the corporate governance models around the world

Corporate governance is a key element in enhancing investor confidence, promoting competitiveness, and ultimately improving economic growth. It is at the top of the international development agenda as emphasised by James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank:

‘The governance of companies is more important for world economic growth than the government of countries.’

Governance Structure

Strategic Purpose

Social responsibility and ethics

Stakeholder expectations

Influence on strategic purpose (11)

Legislative and regulatory reform

Cultural, political and economic norms influence the way in which a society approaches corporate governance and its impact on board leadership, management oversight and accountability. The challenge for policy-makers is to reach an appropriate balance of legislative and regulatory reform, taking into consideration international best practice to promote enterprise, enhance competitiveness and stimulate investment.

Corporate scandals, globalisation and shareholder activism

Much of the recent emphasis on corporate governance has arisen from high-profile corporate scandals, globalisation and increased investor activism.

Corporate scandals 

High profile corporate collapses due to a number of circumstances including financial reporting irregularities leading to a lack of investor confidence and public trust.

Globalisation 

Improved technology and private sector development increasing capital flows to large developing economies such as China. Developing markets in particular need to demonstrate good corporate governance to instil investor confidence thereby encouraging access to the global capital necessary for job creation and economic growth.

Shareholder activism

Institutional investors pursue good corporate governance when managing long-term investments and often take an active role in bringing under-performing companies to task. (8)

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Corporate Governance diagram (9)

Conflicting needs, powers and influence of stakeholders

A stakeholder is a party that can affect or be affected by the actions of the business as a whole.

It defined stakeholders as “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.” (12)

Stakeholders needs and power are identified by stakeholder mapping. Mapping stakeholders is a strategic business tool which identifies and assesses the effect of a different individual or group of stakeholders on a company. There are different types of stakeholders see the below figure. mapping examines the power stakeholders and exert.

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All types of stakeholders (10)

Stakeholders Mapping

Mapping stakeholders is a strategic business tool which identifies and assesses the effect of a different individual or group of stakeholders on a company. It examines the power stakeholders can exert, the relative likelihood of them using that power, and their level of interest regarding the company’s activities. The goal of the analysis is to gauge which stakeholder or group of stakeholders has the greatest potential to affect the company and therefore decide which stakeholders will need particular attention.

High Influence, High Interest

Obviously, you will want to engage these people fully and manage your relationship with them carefully. You may want to keep them included in the general program communications which go to everyone, but additionally you may want to distribute more focussed communications specifically for them, or even meet with them regularly, individually or as a group.

High Influence, Low Interest

These are people who could exert a large amount of influence over your program, but don’t have a direct interest in the program execution or its benefits. These are people you may need to draw on to get things done in spheres outside of your immediate control, so in addition to the regular program communications, you may want to devote specific time to this group to keep them on-side, making it easier to gain their support later if you require their help.

Low Influence, High Interest

Typically, this group involves the people working on the detailed execution of the program, such as technicians and software developers. Despite the fact that this group can’t exert huge influence over the program direction, they can exert huge influence over achieving the schedule. You should keep this group motivated with regular communications, and also take time to collect feedback from this group, so you can tailor your communications and make alterations to the program as you go.

The traditional Stakeholder Map as drawn in most Project Management books identifies this category as “Keep Informed”, but I think you need to do more, as this group is vital to the successful execution of the program, which is why I have also added “Two Way Communication” as well as “Keep Informed”.

Low Influence, Low Interest

These are people who simply need to be kept informed as to the program status, as they are neither that influential or that interested in the program’s execution of benefits.

Project management books typically show an example of mapping individuals to the map, but in a large program this is impossible as so many people are involved, so you may want to keep a spreadsheet to map individuals to one of the four categories above.

As you can see, A Stakeholder Map makes it easier to define the types of communication you might need during your program, and gets you thinking about how to manage your relationship with various stakeholders early in the program, helping you to start on the right foot when managing stakeholders.

Stakeholders Mapping

Profit and Non profit Organizations

Profit organization: An organization is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, controls its own performance, and has a boundary separating it from its environment. It is a business which has a primary goal of making profit and a proposed goal such as helping the environment. An organization is defined by the elements that are part of it its communication, its autonomy, and its rules of action compared to outside events.

Non profit organization: A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the organization’s income is distributed to its members, directors, or officers. Non-profit corporations are often termed “non-stock corporations.” They can take the form of a corporation, an individual enterprise (for example, individual charitable contributions), unincorporated association, partnership, foundation (distinguished by its endowment by a founder, it takes the form of a trusteeship), or condominium (joint ownership of common areas by owners of adjacent individual units incorporated under state condominium acts). Non-profit organizations must be designated as nonprofit when created and may only pursue purposes permitted by statutes for non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations include churches, public schools, public charities, public clinics and hospitals, political organizations, legal aid societies, volunteer services organizations, labor unions, professional associations, research institutes, museums, and some governmental agencies.

Differences between profit and non profit organizations

Profit

Ownership

Composition of board of Directors

Profit – Both the organizations have to generate profit and pay their bills.  In a for profit organization the profits that are not re-invested in the organization are distributed to the owners of the corporation as cash. In the case of a non-profit organization the profits are used to provide goods or services to the group or groups the non-profit was formed to help. A religious organization may use the profits to help its members or others obtain food, medical care, education, etc. A university may use its profits to provide free or low cost education to some or all of its students. The point is that the profits of a non-profit organization always go toward supporting some cause that society deems as good and beneficial and not into the pockets of the investors.

Ownership – A for profit corporation is created when investors get together and transfer assets, money and/or talent to start the corporation. The corporation, which is actually a fictitious person in the eyes of the law, takes title and ownership of the assets, etc. and gives, in exchange for the assets, ownership shares in the company to those who contributed the assets. However, with a non-profit, individuals come together and provide assets, money and/or talent to start the corporation. But, these people who create the corporation do not receive any legal ownership in the corporation and, further, have no guarantee that they will be able to retain control of the corporation once formed. All of the assets are now to be used to advance that cause or provide the service for which the non-profit business was created as determined by the corporation’s board of directors.

Board of directors – In both cases the original board is created by the same people who started the corporation and, in both cases, directors are given fixed terms. Things change when it comes time to re-elect or replace these board members. In the case of a for profit corporation each share of stock entitles its owner to one vote and owners of multiple shares have multiple votes. It is possible for the person or group owning 51% or more of the stock to control both the board and the business with their controlling votes. In the case of a non-profit corporation there are no shares and thus no owners of shares to vote. When a board member’s term is up it is the remaining board members who decide to either re-elect that person to a new term or replace the person. (in organizations which have a defined membership, it is usually the members who elect the board but here each member only has one vote and membership does not give them an ownership right in the assets of the organization in the sense that they can sell it like a stock holder in a for profit corporation can sell their stock and the rights that go with it). It is the board of directors or members which makes the decisions and runs the corporation.

International dimensions of strategic business management and planning

Internationalization Drivers :

There are many general pressures increasing internationalization. Barriers to international trade, investment and migration are all now much lower than they were a couple of decades ago. International regulation and governance have improved, so that investing and trading overseas is less risky. Improvements in communication- from cheaper air travel to the internet- make movement and the spread of ideas much easier around the world. Not least, the success of new economic powerhouse such as the so- called BRICs- Brazil, Russia, India, and china- is generating new opportunities and challenges for business internationally.

Market Drivers:

A critical facilitator of internationalization is some standardization of markets. There are three components underlying this driver. First, the presence of similar customer needs and tastes: the facts that in most societies consumers have similar needs for easy credit cards companies such as Visa. Second, the presence of global customers: for example the car component companies were become international because the car companies like Toyota, or ford has become international and they need the branded goods to provide them to the companies around the world. And finally the transferrable markets like coca cola are still success in same way all over the world.

Cost drivers:

Costs can be reduced by operating internationally. There are three man elements to cost drivers. Increasing volume beyond what a national market might support can give scale economies, both on the production side and in purchasing of supplies. These cost drivers determine the value of the product depending on the values which are produced and purchased where they are produced and what kind of product it produced.

Government drivers:

These can both facilitate and inhibit internationalization. The relevant elements of policy are numerous, including tariff barriers, technical standards, subsides to local firms, owner ship restrictions, local content requirements, controls over technology transfer, intellectual property regimes and capital flow controls.

Competitive drivers:

These kinds of drivers are a bit kind of interdependence between 2 countries. These relate specifically to globalization as an integrated worldwide strategy rather than simpler international strategies. Such drivers have two elements. First, independence between country operations increases the pressure for global coordination.

Hierarchical Levels of Strategy

There are Three Hierarchical Levels of Strategy and they are as follows: –

Corporate Strategy i.e. what business should you are in? Looks at the whole range of business opportunities. It is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the business to meet stakeholder expectations. This is a crucial level since it is heavily influenced by investors in the business and acts to guide strategic decision-making throughout the business. Corporate strategy is often stated explicitly in a “mission statement”.

Business Strategy i.e. Battle plans, tactics used to fight the competition in the industry that your company currently participates in like for Oxfam they are basically in for looking and protecting the children all over the world but it’s not just Oxfam but there are many such organizations which now look after the children. So it is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market. It concerns strategic decisions about choice of products, meeting needs of customers, gaining advantage over competitors, exploiting or creating new opportunities etc.

Functional strategy i.e. operational methods and value adding activities that company choose for its business. It is concerned with how each part of the business is organized to deliver the corporate and business-unit level strategic direction. Operational strategy therefore focuses on issues of resources, processes, people.