A presentation for the International Conference on Business Management & Information Systems - Singapore, November, 2012.

1. A Comparative Study of
Multinational Companies’
Mission Statements
Implementation in HR
Policies
Petar Petrov, PHD student
University of Economics – Varna, Bulgaria

2. A Comparative Study of Multinational Companies’ Mission Statements Implementation in HR Policies
2 Presentation Overview
 Introduction
 Purpose of the Paper
 Defining Organization’s Mission
 Methodology
 Example
 Findings
 Conclusion
 Future Research Suggestions
 Q&A

3. 3 Introduction
 The mission statement is part of the strategic planning in the organization
and it sets the long-term goals of the company business.
 No matter how excellent the strategy is, the company cannot excel, unless
the whole personnel adopts all necessary implementation actions.
 Executives and employees should follow both short-term and long-term
objectives.
 Nevertheless, the problem that employees are mostly short-term oriented
still arises in many organizations.

4. 4 Purpose of the Paper
 The purpose of this paper is to identify how large multinational corporations
implement the affirmations of their mission statements in their human
resource practices.

5. 5 Defining Organization’s Mission
 According to Rue and Byars mission defines the basic purpose or purposes
of the organization.
 Lloyd Byers later divides the organization’s mission into two parts: philosophy
and purpose.
 A company’s organizational philosophy establishes its values, beliefs, and
guidelines, which channel its business conduct.
 Its organizational purpose defines the activities it intends to perform and the kind
of organization it tends to be.
 Rarick & Vitton point out nine components of the mission statement:
customers; products or services; location; technology; concern for survival;
philosophy; self-concept; concern for public image; concern for
employees.

6. 6 Methodology
 The sample contains 25 multinational corporations selected from 25 World's
Best Multinational Workplaces from 2011.
 Descriptive approach and content analysis have been applied in this
research.
 The mission statements have been decomposed to simple goals for the
organization.
 The next stage of the study includes a thorough investigation of all
declared human resource policies of the sample companies.
 Afterwards we compare the level, scope and areas of mission statements’
implementation in the HR policies of the sample companies.

7. 7 Example
• Talent Management
Declared Human Resource Policies
Innovation • Technical Training
• Talent Management
Improve performance • Organizational Development
Giving people THE POWER • Communications programs
Mission Statement Components
TO KNOW® • Sales Training
• Employee Engagement
Approachable
• Employee Engagement
Customer-Driven • Sales Training
• Communications programs
Swift and Agile
• Employee Engagement
Trustworthy • Interpersonal Development

8. 8 Findings
 Approximately 91% of MNCs’ mission statement’s affirmations are
implemented into their human resource policies.
 We observe a greater number of HR policies deriving from that part of the
mission statements which target the employees of the organization.
 Rather few HR activities are declared to develop customer orientation of
the personnel.
 A new approach to implement a large number of mission statement’s
affirmations is developing a corporate university as a powerful tool in the
utilization of the corporate culture.

9. 9 Conclusion
 Multinational corporations with successful workplace culture do implement
a lot (if not all) of their mission statement’s affirmations into their human
resource policies.
 We have identified certain gaps in customer and investor orientation which
should be addressed with proper HR activities.
 Some parts of the mission statements are rather implicit than explicit. They
are conveyed by the elements of the corporate culture of the organization,
therefore specific HR policies for teaching of corporate culture would be
necessary.

10. 10 Future Research Suggestions
 Examining the link between the level of mission statement’s implementation
in the HR policies and the company performance.
 Could we use this level as a key performance indicator?
 Influence of mission statement’s implementation in the HR policies on
motivation, etc.
 Studying the inside company’s approaches for mission statement’s
implementation.

11. 11
November the 23rd, 2012 Petar Petrov, PHD student
E-mail: p.k.petrov@ue-varna.bg