Unveiling the mission statements in social enterprises: a comparative content analysis of US- vs. Spanish-based organizations

ABSTRACT

Mission statements are widely considered an effective strategic and communication tool in all types of organization. Specifically, mission statements are also relevant in social enterprises. Our study examines and describes the mission statements in a sample of 117 Spanish social enterprises and compares them with previous research on US-based social enterprises’ mission statements. A manual content analysis of those mission statements was independently performed by three researchers. A two-sample t-test was performed to test the difference between these two independent US-based and Spanish samples. Our findings suggest that the degree of development of Spanish social enterprises’ mission statements is still in an embryonic state. Additionally, results show that there are significant differences between the components of the social enterprises’ mission statements in Spain and the USA. Mission statements in Spain tend to emphasize customers, products, services and the company philosophy. This study has implications for practitioners, as it highlights the need to elevate the quality of Spanish social enterprises’ mission statements, as well as for researchers, as we uncover future research opportunities that are context specific.

KEYWORDS:

• Social mission
• mission components
• content analysis
• Spain–US social mission comparison

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their thorough and constructive guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Quality on Innovation, Innovation for Quality (QIIQ) – Assessing Quality on Social Enterprises) in 2016.