Mission statements: what university research parks tell us about timing

Abstract

Purpose Mission statements are a key element of any organization. Ideally, the mission statement should be written at the initial stages of an organization’s life to be a useful tool to guide future organization’s decisions and strategy. However, at the early stages of an organization’s life, the organization might still be under development with the objective and stakeholders not yet well-defined, and therefore, stating the mission so early on, might neglect some important elements. In this paper, the authors explore the difference in mission statement quality between missions that have been created at the birth stage of an organization versus missions that are just explicitly formulated once the organization is already well-established and an underlying implicit mission already exists. The authors use as an empirical setting university research parks. Design/methodology/approach The authors evaluate mission statement quality using content analysis. The authors then test the differences on mission statement quality between two groups of research parks, those that have followed a creation strategy versus those that have followed a formulation strategy, using mean of differences test. Findings The authors find that a formulation strategy produces more complete mission statements than the creation strategy. Research parks that have followed a formulation strategy include in their mission statements more references to relevant stakeholders, such as investors, than parks following a creation strategy with respect to their mission statement. Research limitations/implications The research setting is Spanish Science Parks. This research setting is appropriate to answer the research question, as two Park creation strategies, planned and unplanned, allow the researchers to clearly differentiate between two mission conception strategies. However, the sample size is rather small. Practical implications Research has shown that a well-defined mission helps organizations focus and strategy formulation. The authors’ research offers some guidance on how to achieve a high-quality mission statement which will, in turn, help organizations have a better definition of their purpose. Originality/value Research until now has assumed that the mission statement should be formulated at the initial stages of the organization’s life. The authors’ research shows that defining the mission statement later in the process creates higher-quality mission statements that better reflect the organizations purpose and relevant stakeholders.

University Science Parks as an Innovative Tool for University-Business Cooperation

“…According to the Association of University Science Parks (AURP, 2021), the main idea is to generate, attract and maintain research institutions and talents in line with sponsoring research institutions, which include universities, public and private research laboratories. Information flows from academia to the business sector are rapidly taking place in geographically close regions and they are an essential tool for creating innovation (Alegre et al, 2019). At the same time, they bridge the gap between the supply of universities and the private sector on the demand side, requiring the knowledge and expertise of universities (Leyden et al, 2008).…”

Differentiation of Colombian university mission statements

“…Kosm€ utzky and Kr€ ucken (2015) investigated the similarities and differences in universities based on mission statements. Similarly, Alegre et al (2019) studied the mission statements and the strategy of research parks and concluded that the mission statement is an effective strategic tool aimed at achieving objectives and promoting the development of strategic plans to meet established goals based on institutional values.…”