Keywords

Mission Statement, University, Academia, Education, Saudi Arabia.

Introduction

Mission statements have an important bearing on the universities and are used to inform and connect stakeholders. Additionally, mission statements give meaning to a university and emphasize qualities and values to satisfy different stakeholders including students, alumni, employers, faculty, and staff (David, 2012). Mission statements outline future goals, directions, existence, and responsibility, and scholars argue that mission statements are integral to a university's intentions to deliver service quality. Furthermore, universities implement strategies and plans aligned with these statements to ensure all stakeholders are aware of a university's intentions and business practices (David et al., 2014) so consumers can better measure the effectiveness business operations. Previous studies on mission statements in the universities have analyzed the content of mission statements in different countries (Davies & Glaister, 1997; Palmer & Short, 2008; Orwig & Finney, 2007; McKenna et al., 1995; Pitt et al., 2010; Pineno, 2007) but universities in Saudi Arabia and their mission statements were never analyzed critically. This research attempts to analyze the mission statements of Saudi universities in Saudi Arabia.

Literature Review

The idea of mission statement is based on seminal work by Peter Drucker, “the father of modern management”. He mentioned the mission statement in a classical way; “A business is not defined by its name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the business mission. Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic business objectives”. (Drucker, 1973). Mission statements are “enduring statements of purpose that distinguish one business from other similar firms. A mission statement identifies the scope of a firm’s operations in product and market terms” (Pearce & David, 1987) and its importance is highlighted as “That business mission is so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important single cause of business frustration” (Drucker, 1973). Sometimes called a creed statement, a statement of purpose, a statement of philosophy, a statement of beliefs, a statement of business principles, or a statement “defining our business”, a mission statement reveals what an organization wants to be and whom it wants to serve. All organizations have a reason for being, even if strategists have not consciously transformed this reason into writing. It addresses the basic question that faces all strategists: “What is our business?” A clear mission statement describes the values and priorities of an organization. Developing a mission statement compels strategists to think about the nature and scope of present operations and to assess the potential attractiveness of future markets and activities. A mission statement broadly charts the future direction of an organization. A mission statement is a constant reminder to its employees of why the organization exists and what the founders envisioned when they put their fame and fortune at risk to breathe life into their dreams.

Literature also suggest numerous benefits of developing mission statements: (1) To ensure unanimity of purpose within the organization; (2) To provide a basis, or standard, for allocating organizational resources; (3) To establish a general tone or organizational climate; (4) To serve as a focal point for individuals to identify with the organization’s purpose and direction, and to deter those who cannot from participating further in the organization’s activities; (5) To facilitate the translation of objectives into a work structure involving the assignment of tasks to responsible elements within the organization; (6) To specify organizational purposes and then to translate these purposes into objectives; in such a way that cost, time, and performance parameters can be assessed and controlled (King & Cleland, 1978).

The mission’s components are used to assist the strategic planning, which is meant to cover the main organizational concerns. Consequently, there have suggested eight key elements of the mission statement: identification of target customers, markets; principal products and services; specification of geographic domain; core technologies; commitment to development, growth and profitability; company philosophy; company’s self-concept; company’s desired public image (Pearce & David, 1987). Mission statements can and do vary in length, content, format, and specificity. Most practitioners and academicians of strategic management feel that an effective statement should include nine components. Because a mission statement is often the most visible and public part of the strategic-management process, it is important that it includes the nine characteristics as summarized as: (1) Customers—Who are the firm’s customers?; (2) Products or services—What are the firm’s major products or services?; (3) Markets—Geographically, where does the firm compete?; (4) Technology—Is the firm technologically current?; (5) Concern for survival, growth, and profitability—Is the firm committed to growth and financial soundness?; (6) Philosophy—What are the basic beliefs, values, aspirations, and ethical priorities of the firm?; (7) Self-concept—What is the firm’s distinctive competence or major competitive advantage?; (8) Concern for public image—Is the firm responsive to social, community, and environmental concerns?; (9) Concern for employees—Are employees a valuable asset of the firm? (David et al., 2014)

Universities like other industrial sectors fall upon drastic changes and transformations, which are caused by various determinants like demographical changes, advancements in technology, globalization, as well as economic, social, and political situation of the given country, where the institution might be located (Mazurek et al., 2020). It is further stated that that higher education institutions, as a part of dynamic and turbulent environment, face the emergence of not only new entrants of the market, but also the change within the internal and external stakeholders, who are actively transforming and get a possibility to shape and, to some extent, reshape the academic performance (Pucciarelli & Kaplan, 2016). Thus, due to environmental changes, the universities and colleges, and, particularly, the universities that are in a specific need to be accurate and relevant in its activities and propositions to its audiences, need to develop concurrent and competitive mission statements and strategies to achieve them. It is further argued that organizations such as Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) emphasize their interest in the mission statement of the university and its influence on the strategic and operational plans of actions at school, while considering granting accreditation (Palmer & Short, 2008). What is more significant, the accreditation organizations initially pose specific guidelines for creation of mission statement that would lead to efficient strategic management within the institution (Adam, 2016). It is also reported in earlier studies that the usage of keywords: “research” and “global” surged in most of the universities while comparing mission statements from 2015 and 2017 (Mazurek et al., 2020).

A growing number of universities have shown a great importance executive MBA and tailored programs, their missions are addressed to individuals striving for the competences of leadership in times of turbulent change (Baczynska & Korzynski, 2018). Surprisingly, universities rarely refer in their missions to their traditions and heritage, which may lead to the conclusion that they no longer treat it as a distinguishing feature that creates a positive image of the institution. Similarly, schools listed in the FT ranking do not want to be perceived as local (national) or regional (schools) elements emphasizing such a characteristic are used less frequently (Mazurek et al., 2020).

Methodology

All Saudi universities having publicly available mission statements were included in this study (Annexure A) and their mission statements were collected from their official websites. This technique of collecting mission statements through official websites is quite common in earlier studies on mission statements (Kemp & Dwyer, 2003; Peyrefitte & David, 2006; David et al., 2014) and even mission statements for other higher educational institutions, for example, mission statements of medical schools (Lewkonia, 2001), mission statements of law schools (Organ, 2010).

This study employs Content Analysis as it is commonly used technique in contemporary business studies. It provides opportunity to collect verbal, print and electronic data by both ways qualitatively and quantitatively (Mburu et al., 2013). Content analysis or textual analysis is “any technique of making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages” (Holsti, 1969). In other words, it is “summarizing, quantitative analysis of messages that relies on scientific method (including attention to objectivity, inter subjectivity, priori design, reliability, and hypothesis testing) and is not limited as to the types of variables that may be measured or the context in which the messages are created or presented” (Neuendorf, 2002). In the literature content analysis has been extensively used in analyzing mission statements for example in different industries in USA (Peyrefitte & David, 2006); in cross-country analyses (Bartkus et al., 2004); in airlines (Lin et al., 2018); in public libraries (Crawford Barniskis, 2016). Even in academia many studies on mission statement have used content analysis for example in universities (Cortés Sánchez, 2018); in social work school (Holosko et al., 2015); or even in engineering schools (Creamer & Ghoston, 2013). Content analysis has also been used in many studies focused on analyzing business school’s mission statements (Davies & Glaister, 1997; Palmer & Short, 2008); in FT ranked European universitys (Mazurek et al., 2020) and even in AACSB accredited schools (Orwig & Finney, 2007).

The framework used in this study to analyze mission statements is based on the nine possible components of mission statements. Table 1 presents components of mission statements and their possible explanations for universities. Specific to this paper, by adopting the guidelines identified by David (1989), as updated by David (2013), David et al. (2014), the nine components represent the coding scheme used to evaluate the mission statements. This framework of nine components has extensively been used in earlier to analyze mission statements (Mazurek et al., 2020; Cortés Sánchez, 2018; Lin et al., 2018). Table 2 presents the characteristics of mission statements and their possible explanations for universities.

Table 1 Components of Mission Statements
Components	Explanation	Measuring Keywords
Customers	University customers include students, parents, employers, and society in general.	Students and alumni
Products or services	Programs offered by the universities include undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate.	Programs, Training, Teaching, Research, Degree, Undergraduate, Graduate
Markets	The main markets for universities include international, regional, or local.	Local, regional, global and international
Technology	The university's interest in and appreciation of technology.	Technology usage
Concern for survival, growth, and profitability	The university's attention towards economic growth goals.	Growth, Efficiency, Resources, sustainable development, optimal
Philosophy	Fundamental beliefs, values, aspirations, and philosophical priorities of the University	Beliefs, values, aspirations, and philosophical priorities
Self-concept	Competitive advantages, unique selling points, and university image	Competitive advantages, unique selling points, and university image
Concern for public image	Attention to social, societal, and environmental issues	Society, Community, Social
Concern for employees	Attention and appreciation of the faculty and staff	Staff, Faculty, Employees, cadres

Table 2 Characteristics of Mission Statements
Characteristics	Explanation	Measuring Keywords
Broad in scope	The statement of mission should be sufficiently broad to allow judgments about the most promising growth directions and those considered less promising.	Do not include monetary amounts, numbers, percentages, ratios, or objectives
Less than 250 words in length	To see the length of mission statement.	The number of words
Inspiring	Express the reasons people would like to join the university including staff, students, and faculty.	Beliefs, values, aspirations, philosophical priorities, actions, directions, socially responsibility, environmentally responsibility, research, faculty.
Identify the utility of a firm’s products	Determines the utility of the university services like academic programs and research	Programs, Training, Teaching, Research, Degree, Undergraduate, Graduate
Firm is socially responsible	Determines the degree of the social responsibility of the university.	Society, Community, Social
Firm is environmentally responsible	Environmental services like nature, green, trees, pollution, air , energy, water	Environment plus one of the words like nature, green, trees, pollution, air , energy, water
Reconciliatory	Determines interests between different stakeholders like Students, alumni, employers, faculty, community, society and the labor market	More than one stakeholder mentioned
Enduring	Serves to provide a guide as to the university's past and present direction.	Must not mention limited time frame like months or years.

Analyses

This study provides four sets of analyses including (1) Vocabulary density of mission statements; (2) Frequently used keywords in mission statements and Word clouds; (3) Major themes in mission statements; (4) Examination of components and characteristics of mission statements.

Vocabulary Density of Statements

Table 3 shows minimum, maximum, average, and total number of words in mission statements. It also shows number of unique words and vocabulary density. Vocabulary density is the ratio of the number of words in the document to the number of unique words in the document. A lower vocabulary density indicates complex text with lots of unique words, and a higher ratio indicates simpler text with words reused. While comparing mission statements two important findings may be noted. Firstly, for each university, the vision statements were found shorter than their respective mission statements and this finding is in line with earlier research and international observations (Kirkpatrick et al., 2002). Secondly, for each university, the vision statements show higher vocabulary density as compared to mission statements and it indicates that vision statements are relatively simpler and simpler text with words reused. This finding supports the earlier studies (Wintermute, 2019). Voyant tools were used to measure the vocabulary density for both mission statements. This technique has been used in earlier studies focused on analyzing mission statements of academic institutions (Cortés Sánchez, 2018).

Table 3 Vocabulary Density of Mission Statements
Criteria	Private Sector	Public Sector	Combined
Minimum number of words	6	10	6
Maximum number of words	144	72	144
Average number of words	32.3	30.3	31
Total number of words	613	968	1581
Unique words	285	318	464
Vocabulary Density	0.465	0.329	0.293

Frequently Used Keywords and Word Clouds

Table 4 shows frequently used keywords in mission statements. Out of top ten most frequently keywords six keywords were common in both mission statements and include Research, Community, Education, Knowledge, University and Society as frequently used keywords in mission statements. The list does not show “technology” and “global” or “international” as top keywords. This finding is against the trend observed by earlier studies (Mazurek et al., 2020). 40 universities are using word “research” in their vision statement out of total 50 universities and 20 universities are using word ‘university’ and 18 are using ‘research’ in their mission statement out of total 50 universities.

Table 4 Most Frequently Used Keywords in Mission Statements
#	Private Sector		Public Sector		Combined
	Keywords	Frequency	Keywords	Frequency	Keywords	Frequency
1	Research	12	Research	24	Research	36
2	Knowledge	11	Community	17	Knowledge	27
3	Education	10	Knowledge	16	Education	23
4	Quality	7	Society	14	Community	22
5	Community	5	Education	13	Society	18
6	Development	5	Environment	11	Environment	15
7	Learning	5	Scientific	11	Development	15
8	Service	5	Development	10	Quality	14
9	Students	5	Contribute	8	Scientific	14
10	Academic	4	Effective	8	Learning	13

Figure 1 shows collocation graphs of all mission statements of Saudi Universities (N=44). It was processed using Voyant Tools using official websites of the universities. This technique has been used in earlier studies focused on analyzing mission statements of academic institutions (Cortés Sánchez, 2018).

Major Themes Observed

Processing the most frequently used keywords lead to identification of major themes in mission statements. These themes were achieved by combining the similar meaning (synonyms) words in keywords observed in the mission statements. For example, teaching, training, learning, academics, undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate means education so named as “Education”. Similarly, community, society and social means community so grouped as “Community”. Resultantly three themes emerged from the data including “Education”, “Community Service”, and “Research”. Figure 2 present graphical representation of major themes observed in mission statements of Saudi universities. It was processed using official website of universities and Voyant Tools. This technique has been used in earlier studies focused on analyzing mission statements of academic institutions (Cortés Sánchez, 2018).

Critical Analysis of Mission Statements

Mission Statements were further analyzed based on the presence of 9 possible components of mission statements. Table 5 shows assessment of components of mission statements. Least frequently component was “Philosophy”. It was measured by the presence of fundamental beliefs, values, aspirations, and philosophical priorities of the University in the mission statements.

Table 5 Assessment of Components of Mission Statements
Components	Private Sector (N=14)	Public Sector (N=30)	Combined (N=44)
Products or Services	13	26	39
Concern for Public Image	10	27	37
Customers	10	10	20
Self-Concept	3	16	19
Markets	4	11	15
Technology	2	10	12
Concern for Survival, Growth, Profitability	2	9	11
Concern for Employees	3	4	7
Philosophy	3	3	6

Mission statement was further analyzed for 8 possible characteristics. Five characteristics were found common in all mission statements including broad in scope; less than 250 words in length; inspiring; enduring; and reconciliatory. All the mission statements under study were less than 250 words, which is described as one of the factors of good mission statement. In all mission statements more than one stakeholder was mentioned with their relationships, so all were declared “Reconciliatory”. No mission statement was time bound for months or years so all were classified as “Enduring”. Due to diverse nature of the characteristic, various dimensions of the keywords used to measure the “Inspiring” characteristics includes but not restricted to beliefs, values, aspirations, philosophical priorities, actions, directions, socially responsibility, environmentally responsibility, research, faculty. This made all mission statements to be referred as “Inspiring”. Table 6 shows rest of characteristics of mission statements. Weakest link in this analysis was mentioning “Environmentally responsible” in mission statement. Only King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have mentioned environmental responsibility in their mission statement.

Table 6 Assessment of Characteristics of Mission Statements
Characteristics	Private Sector (N=14)	Public Sector (N=30)	Combined (N=44)
Identifies the utility of products/services	13	26	39
Socially Responsible	10	27	37
Environmentally Responsible	0	1	1

Discussion

This paper provides a critical discussion on the discourse of mission statements by Saudi universities and attempts to stipulate many recommendations for university’s administrations, policy makers for higher education in Saudi Arabia, academic and public in general. Firstly, universities are known as the driving force of any economy, intellect of the society, and proud of the nation. A glimpse of universities is normally reflected in their mission statements. After studying mission statements of 44 universities in Saudi Arabia and comparing it with hundreds of universities from all around the world shows a disconnect between the contemporary issues of Saudi Arabia and universities’ mission statements. One missing contemporary strategic change in Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Vision 2030. It was announced in 2015 but even after 5 years not yet reflected in universities as their ultimate vision or mission or even inspiration in their mission statements. Saudi Arabia is at the edge of socio-economic transformation, but universities are silent; rather universities must have played the engine for socio-economic transformation in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, in this technology era where all economic activities are mapped on technology itself and Saudi Arabia has become a hub of technology on many counts including social media usage and public office automation. The kingdom is transforming with digital transformation as key manifestation, ironically “Technology” has failed to emerge as a major component of mission statements of universities in Saudi Arabia. Technology is also playing a vital role in academic enhancement in Saudi Arabia and it must be reflected in all universities as part of their mission statements. Thirdly, under the new government directives, all public sector universities will be given financial independence and will asked to generate funds to share the financial obligations of the universities with ministry of education. Many universities in Saudi Arabia perform many fund generation activities like corporate training and consultancy. But these activities are not reflected in their mission statements. Now they must include other revenue generation activities in their mission statements. Fourth, many universities have legacy of many decades and very well-placed alumni network. But none of universities in Saudi Arabia have mentioned concern for their alumni network in their mission statements. Unlike other professional higher education institutions, the most expensive assets that universities may have is their faculty. Again, concern for faculty is not reflected to a greater extent in almost all mission statements studies in this research. Another important stakeholder of universities is the employer of university graduates. Unfortunately, in university mission statements studied in this research have neglected their employers of their graduates – the ultimate customers of universities. This is the time for universities to address all their stakeholders in their mission statements. Finally, “Philosophy” has emerged as the weakest link in the mission statements. During last five years Saudi Arabia both as a nation and as a country has progressed a lot on many fronts and made it clear outlook of Saudi Arabia including changes in its philosophical orientations. This warrants all universities to address changing beliefs, values, aspirations, and philosophical priorities of the universities in their mission statements.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the mission statements of Saudi universities. An analysis of mission statement of all universities in Saudi Arabia (N = 44) shows there are three main themes have emerged from the data including “Education”, “Community Service”, and “Research”. These themes are coinciding with the directives by regulatory body for educational institutions in Saudi Arabia i.e., Ministry of Education. This report has shown mission statements have a higher vocabulary density in Saudi Arabia. This is due to highly centralized educational environment in Saudi Arabia, dominance of public sector organizations, common nature of business and almost common goals and objectives, typical outputs. This creates a very difficult situation for universities who wish to be unique. Now it is time for Saudi Arabian educational decision makers including university presidents and other senior members to create uniqueness in their institutions, starting with uniqueness in the mission statements.

The research showed shortcomings of mission statements presented by universities in Saudi Arabia. Like all other commercial and non-commercial organizations universities also change their mission s after every few years, and this is the time for universities in Saudi Arabia to update their mission statements with futuristic and all-inclusive stakeholders’ viewpoint.

Need for Future Research

Finally, this paper also provides recommendations for future research on mission statements. Firstly, it recommends the development of separate criteria to evaluate mission statements for academic institutions. For example, components of mission statements must include students, graduates, alumni, employers, parents as “Customers”; undergraduate, masters, doctoral, diploma and certificate programs as their “Educational Services”; Corporate training and consultancy as “Corporate Services”; local, regional, international as “Market”. Secondly as general recommendation mission statements must be assessed with Likert type scales rather than dichotomous scale of yes or no.

Limitations

Limitations of this research include conclusions are drawn on basis of material found in publicly available official websites and content analysis has been used as major analysis technique which has criticized as highly subjective in nature by earlier studies.

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