The Discursive Construal of Purpose by Means of Competence in German and English Corporate Mission Statements

Abstract

Voltaire’s phrasing provides us with key concepts for interpreting corporate mission statements. Building a strategic plan sets out the journey between where an organization is today and where it wants itself to be in the future. It constitutes the path for an organization to follow towards achievement in that it lays out specific goals to be achieved and sets out the course of action for doing so. The intervening implementation process contains various means to allow and drive actual achievement. One important aspect of these means consists in an organization’s abilities (Dutch capaciteit – cf. quotation above) and volition or willingness¹ (Dutch wilskrachtig – cf. quotation above) to make the plan succeed. The concepts of ability and volition are logically related as subject-internal modal properties, and will be subsumed under the heading of competence in the current chapter.