strategic-management

Wal-Mart Stores is bigger than Europe’s Carrefour,
Tesco, and Metro AG combined. It is the world’s number
one retailer, with more than 7,870 stores, including
about 890 discount stores, 2,970 combination discount
and grocery stores (Wal-Mart Supercenters in the United
States and ASDA in the United Kingdom), and 600 warehouse
stores (Sam’s Club). About 55 percent of its Wal-
Mart stores are in the United States, but the company
continues expanding internationally; it is the numberone
retailer in Canada and Mexico and it has operations
in Asia (where it owns a 95 percent stake in Japanese
retailer SEIYU), Europe, and South America. Founder
Sam Walton’s heirs own about 40 percent of Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is a corporate leader in sustainability. The
company in 2009 alone installed rooftop solar arrays on
20 stores and warehouses in California and Hawaii.
We can perhaps best understand vision and mission by focusing on a business when it
is first started. In the beginning, a new business is simply a collection of ideas. Starting a
new business rests on a set of beliefs that the new organization can offer some product or
service to some customers, in some geographic area, using some type of technology, at a
profitable price. A new business owner typically believes that the management philosophy
of the new enterprise will result in a favorable public image and that this concept of the
business can be communicated to, and will be adopted by, important constituencies. When
the set of beliefs about a business at its inception is put into writing, the resulting document
mirrors the same basic ideas that underlie the vision and mission statements. As a business
grows, owners or managers find it necessary to revise the founding set of beliefs, but those
original ideas usually are reflected in the revised statements of vision and mission.
Vision and mission statements often can be found in the front of annual reports. They
often are displayed throughout a firm’s premises and are distributed with company information
sent to constituencies. The statements are part of numerous internal reports, such as
loan requests, supplier agreements, labor relations contracts, business plans, and customer
service agreements. In a recent study, researchers concluded that 90 percent of all companies
have used a mission statement sometime in the previous five years. 1
What Do We Want to Become?
It is especially important for managers and executives in any organization to agree on the
basic vision that the firm strives to achieve in the long term. A vision statement should
answer the basic question, “What do we want to become?” A clear vision provides the
foundation for developing a comprehensive mission statement. Many organizations have
both a vision and mission statement, but the vision statement should be established first
and foremost. The vision statement should be short, preferably one sentence, and as many
managers as possible should have input into developing the statement.
Several example vision statements are provided in Table 2-1.
What Is Our Business?
Current thought on mission statements is based largely on guidelines set forth in the mid-1970s
by Peter Drucker, who is often called “the father of modern management” for his pioneering
studies at General Motors Corporation and for his 22 books and hundreds of articles. Harvard
Business Review has called Drucker “the preeminent management thinker of our time.”
CHAPTER 2 • THE BUSINESS VISION AND MISSION 43
A Wal-Mart partner, BP Solar, installs, maintains, and
owns these systems.
Perhaps more importantly, Wal-Mart in July 2009
unveiled a new environmental labeling program that
requires all its vendors to calculate and disclose the full
environmental costs of making their products. All vendors
must soon distill that information into Wal-Mart’s
new labeling system, thus providing product environmental
impact information to all Wal-Mart shoppers.
This new Wal-Mart program may redefine the whole
consumer products labeling process globally by the year
2012.
Source: Based on Geoff Colvin, “The World’s Most Admired
Companies,” Fortune (March 16, 2009): 76–86; and Miguel Bustillo,
“Wal-Mart Puts Green Movement Into Stores,” Wall Street Journal
(July 16, 2009): Al.