The Sustainable Strategy for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises: The Relationship between Mission Statements and Performance

The study aims to contribute to the literature by empirically examining the relationship between small and medium sized enterprises’ (SMEs) mission statements and their performance in sustainable strategy formulation. Although it seems that there is a relatively vast amount of research with regard to mission statements of companies, very few studies have focused on the relationship between mission statements and performance. When these few studies are taken into consideration, it is difficult to reach any overall conclusion since their findings are mixed and inconclusive. To achieve this aim, 3034 SMEs operating in organized industrial zones in Turkey were examined via a survey approach. In order to investigate the relationships among the variables, nine categories of mission statements as independent variables and four performance indicators (financial, market, production, and overall) as dependent variables were analyzed through logistic regression. This study identified three mission components, (1) survival, growth, and profit; (2) philosophy and values; and (3) public image, as the common independent variables in explaining the performance of SMEs. Survival, growth, and profit is the most frequently observed mission component regardless of the subsector differentiation in the entire sample, which reflects the significance of business sustainability for SMEs in the Turkish manufacturing context. Besides, among all performance indicators, SMEs’ market performance was found to be the lowest when compared to other performance indicators (financial, production, overall). Although the firms were placed in different manufacturing subsectors, similar mission statements were highlighted so that the discourse similarity might be considered as evidence of isomorphism characteristics for SMEs.