Mission Statements for Organizations Essay

Mission Statements for Organizations Essay

Prior to completing this assignment, review Chapter 2, section 2.1 in your Constellation textbook and read the article Answer 4 Questions to Get a Great Mission Statement (Links to an external site.) (Hull, 2013), being sure to review this Fortune 500 Mission Statements (Links to an external site.) Now, turning to the company you selected, research and find the company’s mission statement. Then,

State how the mission statement provides guidance for the company’s organizational activities.

Evaluate the company’s mission statement per each of the four questions posed in the Hull article as well as your assigned readings for the week.

Rate the company according to the 5-star rating system used in the Fortune 500 list, stating how many stars would you rate the mission statement. Explain your rationale.

Rewrite the mission statement so that it better addresses the four questions and forms a complete mission statement.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.

Leadership, Governance, Values, and Culture

Learning Objectives

By the time you have completed this chapter, you should be able to do the following: • Understand the differences and similarities between leaders and managers. • Know why strategic success depends on finding, developing, and evaluating capable leaders. • Appreciate the value and necessity of creating a corporate vision. • Appreciate the value of having an overarching purpose for any organization.

• Compare the roles and responsibilities of top management and the board of directors. • Appreciate that how a company is organized depends on the strategy it is pursuing. • Realize the importance of corporate values and culture and the extent to which they can enable or hinder strategy implementation.
• Understand that organizational change is inevitable and desirable if a corporation wants to improve its competitiveness and performance.

Mood board/Super Stock

This chapter will focus on the roles of power, leadership, organizational culture, and attitudes toward innovation as they relate to strategic planning and management. The importance of leadership, the roles of top management and the board of directors, values and culture, and organizational change all affect the quality of strategic planning and are in turn affected by it.

2.1 Strategic Leadership and Developing a Vision In articles in the business press and the literature, the words manager, leader, executive, and administrator are often used interchangeably. Consider, however, the implied judgments in the descriptions of a person as “a real leader” versus “just a manager,” and it becomes evident that the terms are different. Ackoff and Pourdehnad (2009) try to capture the differences as follows:

• An administrator is one who manages others in the attempt to accomplish a goal by the use of certain methods, both of which are specified by a third party.
• A manager is one who oversees others in the attempt to accomplish a goal by the use of certain methods specified by the manager.
• A leader is one who conducts and directs others in the voluntary attempt to accomplish a goal by the use of certain methods, both of which are chosen or approved of by the leader’s followers.

Although all types of executives have the authority to coerce others into doing what they want done, leaders more often use influence rather than authority to get others to do what they want them to do and rely more extensively on interpersonal communication and the strength of their relationships with others to effect change.

From this, one might assume that the only person who creates a vision is the individual at the apex of an organization such as CEO of the company or the president of a country. This is certainly not the

CHAPTER 2Section 2.1 Strategic Leadership and Developing a Vision

case. At any level and in any sphere of life, anyone who can visualize a better state of affairs and can persuade others that such a vision makes sense has demonstrated leadership qualities. Anyone who is dissatisfied with the status quo and has suggestions for change and improvement demonstrates leadership qualities to the extent that they are able to persuade others involved of the merits and benefits of such changes.

By contrast, managers charged with just implementing change and achieving a set of performance objectives don’t need to be leaders even though what they do is nonetheless critical to a company’s success.

Earlier, we used the phrase strategic leadership, but what makes leadership “strategic”? Recall from Chapter 1 that a strategy is required only to combat competition. In the same way, “strategic leadership” involves developing an outlook and strategy that will position the company to become a stronger competitor, in both the short term and the long term.

Whereas leadership may be required in implementing changes or improvements to parts of the organization, strategic leadership determines the long-run survival and success of the entire company.

Power in an Organization Although all types of executives have the authority to coerce others into doing what they want done, leaders more often use communication to exact a range of more pro-social influence tactics to gain others’ compliance.

Leaders have the power to influence or affect the people around or under them. This is true regardless of whether they have been appointed to leadership positions. There are five types of power in an organization.

Legitimate power is the authority obtained through the occupation of a position in the company. The higher the position an individual occupies, the more authority and legitimate power he or she holds. Expert power is based on the unique experience, competence, and expertise possessed by a leader.

For example, a group surviving a crash on a mountainside would willingly follow the member with survival knowledge and skills. Referent power is derived from the appreciation, high regard, and loyalty of a leader’s followers and is a direct result of the leader’s character.

Leaders who have the ability to give or withhold meaningful incentives hold reward power. These can take the form of tangible rewards such as pay raises, bonuses, or preferred job assignments or intangible rewards like verbal praise or respect. A leader or manager to who is in a position to punish a subordinate is said to have coercive power. This could take the form of firing someone, denying a raise or bonus, or reassigning the person to an undesirable location (Jones & George, 2007).

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