Mission and vision statements; a need for effective messaging? An evaluation case study, comparing faith-based and secular organisations’ text word count

Abstract

Given general criticism of protracted mission and vision statements (MVSs), this study focused on investigating the word count of MVSs from a sample of Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church organisations and institutions around the globe. As part of a summative evaluation, the numerical data from the SDA sample are compared with data from other faith-based as well as secular counterparts and also, notably, with data from ‘recognised’ MVS exemplars. The findings may challenge some administrators to give more careful attention to effectively communicating the purpose and aspirational statements of their establishments, differentiating between the two text types and, more importantly, the length format in which these are expressed.