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Impact of mission statement components on social enterprises’ performance

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Abstract

Social enterprises mix economic and social objectives, forming a bridge between non-profit and profit enterprises. Mission statements are a strategic tool that can provide a company with a purpose of being, a “being” that communicates the core of the business to internal and external stakeholders. In this paper we aim to investigate the link between mission statements and performance in social enterprises. The sample includes 39 social enterprises located in Spain. Our findings indicate that those firms for which the mission statement explicitly considers the customers and the product/service offer are more likely to exhibit higher economic performance.

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Notes

  1. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/social-economy/enterprises_en.

  2. EMES: EMergence des Enterprises Sociales en Europe. The acronym is in French because the first research project was carried out in France, and the acronym was retained when the network decided to become international (www.emes.net).

  3. Organisational commitment: “How an individual feels towards their organisation in terms of emotional attachment, acceptance of goals and values, identification with the organisation, behavioural investments and wanting to stay in the organisation” (Patel et al. 2015: 761).

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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 [Ref: UIC_Novells 15_03].

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  1. Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, C/Immaculada, 22, 08017, Barcelona, Spain

    Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent, Marta Mas-Machuca & Patricia Guix

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  1. Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent
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  2. Marta Mas-Machuca
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  3. Patricia Guix
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Correspondence to Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent.

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Berbegal-Mirabent, J., Mas-Machuca, M. & Guix, P. Impact of mission statement components on social enterprises’ performance. Rev Manag Sci 15, 705–724 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-019-00355-2

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