Mission Statements and Vision Statements: Examining the Relationship Toward Performance Outcomes

This paper examines 798 firms with mission statements and vision statements to show there are relationships between the two and posits that strong relationships produced greater organizational performance.Using the taxonomies of Allison (2017a), Allison (2017b), and an extension of the latter developed in this paper, the statements are classified into their taxonomic groups and then analyzed statistically.The results surprisingly show a single strong link between one type of mission statement and one type of vision statement.This paper then discusses how such a relationship may result in superior performance outcomes.Consequently, this paper significantly contributes to theory by finding a specific relationship between statements, discussing why some firms have this relationship, and then extending this discussion to organizational performance.