STRATEGIC CASE STUDY

CORPORATE VALUES, MISSION, VISION

AND OBJECTIVES

David Abbam Adjei

Chapter Outline
This chapter will discuss
1. Core Values
2. Mission and Mission Statement
3. Vision and vision statements
4. Goals and Objective
5. Using Balanced Scorecards for goals and objectives
6. Culture and its influence on Values, mission, vision
goals and objectives
David Abbam Adjei
INTRODUCTION
To develop a good strategy and implement such
strategy, there must be a purpose for the organisation.
A given business could choose from a variety of
purposes and the key thing is to choose a purpose
which is useful to the business.
It is managers who will need to form a view on this
purpose and find a way of expressing it.

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Such purpose of firms may be expressed explicitly
through statements of corporate core values, vision,
mission and objectives.

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CORPORATE CORE VALUES
“A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of
conduct or end-state of existence is personally or
socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of
conduct or end-state of existence” (Rokeach, 1973).
A belief is ones view
Hofstede’s (1980) definition of a value is “a broad
tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over other”.

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‘A set of beliefs that become embodied in an ideology
or organizational philosophy thus can serve as a guide
and as a way of dealing with the uncertainty or
uncontrollable or difficult events” (Schein, 2004).

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Core values that are common across organizations in
different industries:
1. Accountability – Acknowledging and assuming
responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and
policies.
2. Balance – Taking a proactive stand to create and
maintain a healthy work-life balance for workers.
3. Commitment – Committing to great product,
service, and other initiatives that impact lives within
and outside the organization.
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4. Community –Contributing to society and
demonstrating corporate social responsibility.
5. Diversity – respecting the diversity and giving the
best of composition. Establishing an employee
equity program.
6. Empowerment – Encouraging employees to take
initiative and give the best. Adopting an error-
embracing environment to empower employees to
lead and make decisions.
7. Innovation – Pursuing new creative ideas that have
the potential to change the world.
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8. Integrity – Acting with honesty and honour without
compromising the truth
9. Ownership – Taking care of the company and
customers as they were one’s own.
10.Safety – ensuring the health and safety of
employees and going beyond the legal requirements
to provide an accident-free workplace.

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Values can be formulated in an explicit way and
incorporated into the mission statement or they just
flow through the organizational culture in an implicit
way.

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Corporate values are the operating philosophies or
principles that guide an organization's internal conduct
as well as its relationship with its customers, partners,
and shareholders.
Values are strong motivators to act in the best interests
of the purpose of the company.
Core values educate clients and potential customers
about what the company is about and clarify the
identity of the company.
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Values are important since they play the guiding role in
any decision-making process.
Core Values create a foundation of attitudes and
practices that support long-term success. Core Values
provide reference points for shaping and building the
business.
Core values are becoming primary recruiting and
retention tools in organisations.

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Shared values define the fundamental character of the
organization, the attitude that distinguishes it from all
others

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CORPORATE MISSION
According to Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (2011),
a mission is a general expression of the overall purpose
of the organisation, which, ideally, is in line with the
values and expectations of major stakeholders and
concerned with the scope and boundaries of the
organisation.

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It is sometimes referred to in terms of the apparently
simple but challenging question: ‘What business are we
in?’
The Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in the
United Kingdom provided a definition for mission that
included four elements: purpose, strategy, behaviour
standards and values.
The purpose tries to answer the question What is the
company for? What business are we in? For whose
benefit is all the effort being put in?
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To achieve a purpose in competition with other
organizations, there needs to be a strategy. Strategy
provides the commercial logic for the company. If the
purpose is to be the best, there must be a strategy
explaining the principles around which the company
will become the best.

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Purpose and strategy are empty intellectual thoughts
unless they can be converted into action, into the
policy and behaviour guidelines that help people to
decide what to do on a day-to-day basis.

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To capture the emotional energy of an organization the
mission needs to provide some philosophical or moral
rationale for behaviour to run alongside the
commercial rationale. This brings us to the next
element of the definition of mission: values.

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Mission Statement
The mission statement is a declaration of an
organization’s “reason for being.” It answers the pivotal
question “What is our business?”
A well-conceived mission statement defines the
fundamental, unique purpose that sets a company
apart from other firms of its type and identifies the
scope or domain of the company’s operations in terms
of products (including services) offered and markets
served.

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Components of Mission Statement
Mission statements can and do vary in length, content,
format, and specificity. It should include the following:
• Customers—Who are the firm’s customers?
• Products or services—What are the firm’s major
products or services?
• Markets—Geographically, where does the firm
compete?
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• Technology—Is the firm technologically current?
• Concern for survival, growth, and profitability—Is the
firm committed to growth and financial soundness?
• Philosophy—What are the basic beliefs, values,
aspirations, and ethical priorities of the firm?
• Self-concept—What is the firm’s distinctive
competence or major competitive advantage?

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• Concern for public image—Is the firm responsive to
social, community, and environmental concerns?
• Concern for employees—Are employees a valuable
asset of the firm?

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Examples of mission statements
The mission statement of GCB Bank is ‘Provide first
class banking solutions for our customers and value for
all stakeholders’.
The mission statement of Microsoft is ‘To enable
people and businesses throughout the world to realize
their full potential’
The mission statement of Google is to ‘Organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible
and useful’
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Characteristics of a Good Mission Statement
1. It as brief as possible
2. It memorable
3. It unique to the company
4. It realistic
5. State the business area
6. Provide a general statement of the firm’s culture

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Functions or Benefits of Having a Clear Mission
• Achieve clarity of purpose among all managers and
employees.
• Provide direction.
• Provide a focal point for all stakeholders of the firm.
• Resolve divergent views among managers.
• Project a sense of worth and intent to all stakeholders.
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• Promote a sense of shared expectations among all
managers and employees.
• Project an organized, motivated organization worthy
of support.
• Achieve higher organizational performance.
• Achieve synergy among all managers and employees.
• Provide a basis for all other strategic planning
activities, including the internal and external
assessment, establishing objectives, developing
strategies, choosing among alternative strategies
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• To facilitate the translation of objectives into a work
structure involving the assignment of tasks to
responsible elements within the organization
• To provide a basis, or standard, for allocating
organizational resources

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CORPORATE VISION
As the word ‘vision’ suggests, it is an image of how the
organizations sees itself. It is in most cases a dream, the
aspirations the organization holds for its future.
A vision or 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
organisation.
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Vision describes what the organization would like to
become. A vision statement is, therefore, concerned
with what the organisation aspires to be.
Vision and mission are two distinct concepts reflecting
different time frames. Vision is an idealistic or
principled projection of the company in an undefined
future, in a mature and successful position.

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A Mission defines the company's business, its
objectives and its approach to reach those objectives. A
Vision describes the desired future position of the
company.

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Examples of Vision Statements
The Vision of GCB Bank is ‘To be the leading bank in all
our markets’.
Google’s vision statement is “to provide access to the
world’s information in one click.”
Microsoft’s corporate vision is “to help people and
businesses throughout the world realize their full
potential.”

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A good vision should have the following general
characteristics or attributes, Clayton (1997):
1. Powerful
2. Purposeful
3. Self-determining
4. Concrete
5. Multi-faced
6. Emotional

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COMPANY GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
According to Johnson and Scholes “A goal is a general
statement of purpose which is usually in line with
mission”.
Mintzberg defines goals as “the intention behind
decisions or actions”.

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Objectives
Objectives are statements of specific outcomes that are
to be achieved. Objectives – both at the corporate and
at the business unit level – are often expressed in
financial terms.

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In contrast to an objective, a goal as an open-ended
statement of what one wants to accomplish, with no
quantification of what is to be achieved and no time
criteria for completion.

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Schools of thought on what goals and objectives to set
1. The Shareholder goals or objectives Argument.
That is the maximisation of shareholders wealth
2. Multiple Stakeholders and Multiple goals or
objectives argument

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Characteristics of good objectives
1. Specific—What exactly is the company going to do
and for whom?
2. Measurable—Is it quantifiable and can the company
measure it?
3. Attainable/Achievable—Can the company get it
done in the proposed time frame with the resources
and support they have available?

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4. Relevant—Will this objective have an effect on the
desired goal or strategy?
5. Time bound—When will this objective be
accomplished?

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Specifically, Objectives perform the following
functions:
1. Deal in the Concrete. One purpose of strategic
objectives is to ground the vague mission and
vision in concrete with specific and quantified
targets.
2. A guide to implement strategy

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3. Objectives set, provides responsibility
4. Good objectives, that are specific, measurable and
have a deadline attached, unify the activities of
everyone throughout the business.
5. Good objectives provides Motivation.
6. Objectives are basis for Evaluation.

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Corporate Objectives and Balanced Scorecard
The balanced scorecard is a management system that
enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy
and translate them into specific objectives and actions.
It provides feedback around both the internal business
processes and external outcomes in order to
continuously improve strategic performance and
results.
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The balanced scorecard approach to objectives setting
and performance measurement focus on four different
perspectives and uses financial and non-financial
indicators or measures.
The four perspectives are: financial, customer, internal
processes, innovation and learning.

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Perspectives Question Explanation
Financial How do we create value for our Covers traditional measures such as
shareholders? growth, profitability and shareholder
value but set through talking to the
shareholder or shareholders direct

Customer What do existing and new Gives rise to targets that matter to
customers value from us? customers: cost, quality, delivery,
inspection, handling and so on

Internal What processes must we excel at Aims to improve internal processes

to achieve our financial and and decision making
customer objectives?

Innovation and learning Can we continue to improve
and create future value?
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Considers the business's capacity to
maintain its competitive position
through the acquisition of new skills
and the development of new
products
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The balanced scorecard supplies three essential items to
Corporate Strategy.
• It articulates the vision. The holistic vision is communicated
to the entire organization, and the individual efforts are
linked to business unit objectives.
• The scorecard supplies a strategic feedback system. This
system views the strategies as hypotheses, and should be
able to test, validate, and modify these hypotheses.
• The balanced scorecard facilitates strategy review.

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Benefits of balanced scorecard
• Avoids management reliance on short-term or
incomplete financially-based measures.
• Can assist in ‘driving down’ the corporate strategy to
divisions and functions: by forcing them to develop
success measures.
• Can assist stakeholders in evaluating the firm if
measures are communicated externally.

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• The Balanced Scorecard helps align key performance
measures with strategy at all levels of an organization
• Maximized Cooperation - Team members are focused
on helping one another succeed.
• Initiatives are continually measured and evaluated
against industry standards

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CULTURE AND CORPORATE STRATEGY
Schein (1990) defines organisational culture more
specifically as the ‘basic assumptions and beliefs that
are shared by members of an organisation, that
operate unconsciously and define in a basic taken-for-
granted fashion an organisation’s view of itself and its
environment’.

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Corporate culture represents the professional values a
company adopts that dictate how it interacts with
employees, suppliers, partners and clients.
A company's culture will be reflected in its dress code,
business hours, office setup, employee benefits,
turnover, hiring decisions, treatment of clients, client
satisfaction, and every other aspect of operations.

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Levels of Culture
1. National and regional cultures. Hofstede, has shown
how attitudes to work, authority, equality and other
important factors differ from one country to another.
2. The organisational field. The culture of an
organisation is also shaped by ‘work-based’
groupings such as an industry (or sector), a
profession etc. that interact more frequently with
one another than with those outside the field.

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3. Organisational culture. According to Schein (1997),
the culture of an organisation is often conceived as
consisting of four layers. The organisational culture
are made up of: values, beliefs, behaviours and
taken-for-granted assumptions.
4. Functional or Divisional Organisational subcultures.
different divisions may be pursuing different types of
strategy and these different market positionings
require or foster different cultures
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Analysing culture: the cultural web
In order to understand both the existing culture and its
effects it is important to be able to analyse culture. The
cultural web is a means of doing this. The cultural web
shows the behavioural, physical and symbolic
manifestations of a culture that inform and are
informed by the taken-for-granted assumptions, or
paradigm, of an organisation.
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David Abbam Adjei
Routine behaviors: those behaviors are performed by
the members of an organization when carrying out
their activities.
Rituals are activities and events that highlight what is
important in a particular organization and they
reinforce the culture of an organization.
Stories: they relate to the successes, failures, leaders,
and villains. They are told by members of a company to
each other and externally to third parties.
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Symbols: they refer to logos, offices, iconography, cars, and
jargon.
Power structures: they influence the core assumptions
within organizations. Usually are the most powerful
groupings in a company that are associated with the core
beliefs.
Control systems: they refer to measurement and reward
systems.
Organization structures: it reflects the relationships
between roles.
Paradigm: this area summarizes and emphasizes the
behaviors observed in the other elements of the web. The
taken-for-granted behaviours
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Charles Handy’s Cultural model
Handy suggests that we can classify organisations into a
broad range of four cultures.
The four cultures he discusses are Power’, ‘Role’, ‘Task’
and 'People’. The purpose of the analysis is to assess
the degree to which the predominant culture reflects
the real needs and constraints of the organisation.

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Power Culture
There are some organizations where the power
remains in the hands of only few people and only they
are authorized to take decisions. They are the ones who
enjoy special privileges at the workplace. They are the
most important people at the workplace and are the
major decision makers.

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Role culture
Role culture is a culture where every employee is
delegated roles and responsibilities according to his
specialization, educational qualification and interest to
extract the best out of him.

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Task Culture
Organizations where teams are formed to achieve the
targets or solve critical problems follow the task
culture. In such organizations individuals with common
interests and specializations come together to form a
team. In such a culture every team member has to
contribute equally and accomplish tasks in the most
innovative way.
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Person Culture
There are certain organizations where the employees feel that
they are more important than their organization. Such
organizations follow a culture known as person culture. In a
person culture, individuals are more concerned about their
own self rather than the organization. The organization in such
a culture takes a back seat and eventually suffers. Employees
just come to the office for the sake of money and never get
attached to it. They are seldom loyal towards the
management and never decide in favour of the organization.

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