A Critical Comparison between Manufacturing and Service Firms’ Mission Statements: Manage Your Firms’ Mission Statements with Care Using Readability and Lexical Techniques

This paper aims to investigate the Readability and Lexical Density of the mission statements of the large service and manufacturing firms. In respect of mission statements, a comparison between the service and manufacturing firms is drawn. For initial data arrangement, the mission statements of all selected service firms are grouped together, same was also done with the manufacturing firms separately. The mission statements are processed through the software for Readability (Gunning Fog, Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, Automated, Flesch Reading Ease score) and Lexical Density analysis in two categories, service firms and manufacturing firms. Result show that Service firms’ mission statements are more Lexically dense and possess higher average level than those of the manufacturing firms. This study contributes to the Strategic Management literature and practical implications to the service and manufacturing firms and their stakeholders. Also comes out of the ole ways of data analysis in management studies. Future researchers may carry out similar research in a specific industry.


Research Gap Identified
A mission statement is a strategic intend, and the first element in the chain of Strategic Management process, showing the organisation the passageway for achieving the organisational and social objectives. An organisation's mission is simply the connection between the organisation and the environments, both internal and external. It is the undertaking and inspiration of doing good to the organisation and the society. 'Why does the organisation exist in the environment?', What does the organisation provide to the society?' and overall 'How does the organisation maintains the connection between itself and the society?' What is our business and what it should be? (Drucker, 1973;Kazmi, 1992). The Mission Statement (MS) of any organisation briefly a light showing a path and unified direction to the organisation itself and all the stakeholders associated with it, of achieving overall victory. Referring many authors (Bart, 2001;Blair-Loy, Wharton, and Goodstein, 2011;Sattari, Pitt, andCaruana, 2011), Walker (2012) states "mission statements can potentially impact organizational effectiveness, but research suggested the mission statements' wordings, content, and dissemination impact their overall ability to reach employees" (p. 87) and all the other stakeholders. Hence, the Mission Statement (MS) is a significant lighthouse for the business ships, where the language plays the role of light-rays dispensing from the lighthouses. Probably, all large organisations have their mission statements published in their web pages or, annual reports. Mission Statements (MS) may have effectiveness to the organisational outputs and employee morale. Well researched and appropriate words, sentences, contents and syntaxes are the cruxes of the Mission Statements, which are missing in the previous studies.

The Order of Presentation
This study focuses on the lexical density and readability stances of the mission statements of total 10 organisations (5-manufacturing companies and 5-from service companies) of different industries. Section-1 of this paper describes the preliminary issues. Section-2 of this study reviews the important literature and previous studies. Section-3 states the research methodology, while Section-4 presents the findings. The Section-5 discusses the results of the study and Section-6 concludes this study.

Literature Review
A mission statement for any organisation is a driving force. Campbell (1989) finds, four factors revolve around a mission statement: (i) purpose (the reasons of the existence of the company) (ii) values (the company's attitudes/ views about its stakeholders) (iii) Standards and behaviours (the policies should correspond with the mission) and (iv) strategy (the firms' strategies for achieving their purpose).
Cortes-Sanchez (2018) analysed 248 Mission Statements (MS) of various universities of the world. The experiment applied the content analysis techniques using Voyant Tools. It finds, (1) a necessity for self-awareness by the universities; (2) an overall emphasis on Business Management and Strategy ISSN 2157-6068 2020 society and students, as stakeholders; (3) there were no discernible similarities in keywords used between firms and universities; (4) mission statement tends to be longer in universities from Asia and shorter from Europe; (5) the absence of quantitative elements into MS (e.g. number of new students enrolled); (6) small universities prioritized knowledge over research; (7) the youngest universities tend to use more of the least frequently used words; (8) collaboration was a barely mentioned term, although the pre-eminence of research and the dominance of groups in knowledge is now a global trend; (9) the youngest universities tend to use more of the least frequently used words; (10) public universities emphasized individuals (i.e., students) and private universities emphasized education as a whole; and (11) the private sector has a noticeable interest in the society which contrasts with the public sector's focus on community.
Alegre, Berbegal-Mirabent, Guerrero & Mas-Machuca (2018) reviewed 53-academic articles and the works of the same were divided into four thematic areas: (i) mission statement development (ii) mission statement components (iii) mission impact on employees and (iv) mission impact on performance. They found that mission statements are widely practiced on ground by the organisations, while poorly studied in theor y. Klemm, Sanderson and Luffman (1991) investigate the UK companies if the companies use mission statements for employee-motivation, or external image building. They conclude by stating that mission statement integrating the company values help managers exercise leadership behaviour inside the organisations.
Desmidt (2016) studied on a Belgian public organisation and collected data from 1,418 employees. The study finds that the quality of mission statement and employee mission engagement are positively related. Further, Desmidt (2016) continues by informing, " individual acceptance of the mission statement varies with the analysed organisation and can be, partially, explained by cognitions and attributes of the message receiver (hierarchical, perceived self-efficacy and person-organisation fit), and employee cognitions regarding the message sender (behavioural integrity) and the message (mission ambiguity)" (p. 894). Pearce & David (1987) and David & David (2017) formulated nine components model of examining the mission statement. The nine components are: (i) customers (the target market) (ii) products and services (offerings and value provided to customers) (iii) geographical location (where customers seek products and services) (iv) technology (the technology used to produce and market products) (v) concern for survival/ growth/ profits (the firm's concern for financial soundness (vi) philosophy (the firm's values, ethics, beliefs) (vii) public image (contributions the firm makes to the communities) (viii) employees (the importance of managers and employees) (ix) distinctive competence (how the company is different than the competitors). David & David (2003) applied the model of Pearce & David (1987)  Syarif and Putri (2018) investigated the students' ability in writing academic text in the context of Indonesia. They examined 30-pieces of students' introduction parts thesis proposals. They had an average lexical density of 51.19%. Ismail, et al. (2019) investigated the top ranked Indian-Governmental web-sites (N=20). They find that highest average level is 15 (e.g. The President of India web-page)-which is 20 to 21 years old readers are required to understand the web-site, while Ministry of Finance, Commercial Land Record Settlement and Madhya Pradesh Education Portal are comparatively easy (6-Grade).
Though many knowledge management authors (Hasnain, Jasimuddin, and Fuller-Love , 2016) could not apply Lexical approach in their study, but using Lexical technique, Van Deventer et al. (2015) analysed 42 definitions of knowledge management covering a period of 11 years. Through the application of lexical study, knowledge discovery and text analysis method, they found that knowledge management is directly defined by people, process and context.
From the above, literature review, it is clear that no author has carried out the lexical and readability of the mission statements of the organisations.

Sampling and Raw Data Processing
For sampling purpose, total 10 mission statements of 5-Service organisations and 5-manufacturing organisations were selected from the various industries randomly (Table-1 and Appendix-A).
The mission statements were collected from the company web-sites and David & David (2017). The mission-statements in respect of service firms and manufacturing firms are segregated and constructed as two separated texts respectively. The data are run in the software for (i) Basic text (ii) Readability (iii) Lexical Density and (iv) Parts of Speech analysis. Under basic text, the elementary statistics (like word count, sentence count, complex word count, syllable count, average word length, median word length, standard deviation of word length, average sentence length, median sentence length, standard deviation of sentence length etc.) are calculated. ISSN 2157-6068 2020   Complex words means ' words holding 3 or, more syllables'. Word length is the number of letters in a word, sentence length is the number of words in a sentence. Standard Deviation is the square root of an average of the squares of the deviations. Readability determines the ease of reading a text or material. It determines the ease of understanding the words and sentences.

Gunning Fox Index (GFI)
GFI is one of the readability tests focusing for a particular audience. It was first introduced by Robert Gunning in 1952 in USA. According to Robert, to find out GFI for a text, find the average sentence length, e.g. Number of words/Number of Sentences, add the average sentence length with the percentage of complex words (e.g. 3 or more syllabus). Multiply the whole result by 0.4. The formula is appended below:

Flesch Reading Ease Score
Flesch reading ease test shows how far a text is easy to read. Lower score means, reading difficulty is higher. The formula is shown below: Flesch Reading Ease Score=206.853-1.015 (total number of words/total number of sentences)-84.6 (total number of syllables/total number of words)

Flesch-Kincaid (F-K) grade level
Flesch-Kincaid (F-K) grade level: means the number of years education needed to understand the text. Generally, the result 12 is equivalent to grade level 12. A score 5 indicates grade in school level at 5, a score of 6.6 is equivalent to grade level 7, and so on. ISSN 2157-6068 2020 Flesch-Kincaid= 0.39 (total words/total sentences) + 11.8 (total syllables/total words)-15.59

SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook)
SMOG is a measurement tool of readability, which shows the years of education needed to comprehend to read a text. This is called SMOG grade. It is the brain-child of McLaughlin (1969). According to McLaughlin (1969), a text usually should have 30-sentences to calculate SMOG. Firstly, it needs to count 10-sentences from the starting of the text, 10 from the middle and 10 from the end of the text. Secondly, find and count 3or more syllabus words. Thirdly, Square-rooting the number and making it rounding to the nearest 10. Fourthly, add 3 to this figure. Fifthly, the final figure shows the reading grade a person should have to understand the text fully.

Coleman-Liau Index
Coleman and Liau claim that Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog models are based on the calculation of syllables in each word and each sentences, hence the models do not give accurate results. Coleman and Liau gave the idea of measuring the index through the average word length in letters is better than the syllable measurements. Therefore a mechanical measurement also gives an accurate picture. The Coleman-Liau Index estimates a U.S. grade level to comprehend a text.

The Automated Readability Index (ARI)
Like the previous models as stated above, this ARI model also approximately shows the US grade to understand the text. The formula is:

Words=Number of Spaces
Sentences=Number of Sentences.

Lexical Density
Lexical density is one of the important aspects of writings presenting the richness of language and contents. "To find out the lexical density as a percentage figure, we divide the number of lexical words by total number and multiply with 100" (Bloor & Bloor, 2007, p.170 how difficult or easy a text or a group of texts to read. They continue by exhibiting the classifications of words, "In terms of word classes (parts of speech), the breakdown of lexical and grammatical typically: lexical word: noun (book, bigotry, absence), lexical verb (hit, went, gone, writing), adjectives (swift, oblique), numeral (four, fourth), lexical adverb (quickly, fast). Grammatical word: pronoun (he, who, whose, mine), auxiliary verb (will, must, can, be, have), preposition (on, by, under), conjunctional (and, while), grammatical adverb (very, quite, soon, however), determiner (the, a, these, some) (p. 170). Further, Khamahani (2015) finds, "texts with a lower density are more easily understood. A score of 60-70% indicates a text that is lexically dense. A score of 40-50% is indicative of text that is not considered to be dense" (p. 14). However, generally above 50% is treated as lexically dense (Khamahani, 2015).

Lexical density = (Number of lexical words/ Total number of words) x 100
(Ure, 1971)  fig. 1 it is clear that, in case of service firms, number of nouns, adverbs and auxiliary verbs are approximately same like the manufacturing firms. The number of adjectives in case of service firms are higher in comparison with manufacturing firms (9.90% and 7.93% respectively). Same goes to verbs. However, Prepositions, are higher in manufacturing firms (14.14% and 10.22% respectively). Hence, the service firms usually give more command ISSN 2157-6068 2020 verbs in their mission statements, probably, to attract their customers.

Discussion
Table-2 exhibits the basic statistics. The syllable count is more in service firms than those of manufacturing firms. Service firms' mission statements consists of more complex words (78) than the statements of manufacturing firms (66). The length of the mission statements' sentences of the manufacturing firms are more spread than service firms (Standard Deviation is 9.86 and 4.85 respectively). In case of the words' standard deviation, it is 3.06 & 2.97 for service firms and manufacturing firms respectively. Table-13 shows the Flesch Reading Ease Score for service and manufacturing firms. This study finds that both service and manufacturing firms' mission statements are undergraduate levels (score: 40.1 and 44 respectively, e.g. difficult level). In case of Khamahani (2015) it had an educational level (USA) requirement was postgraduate level (e.g. very difficult level). In case of Lexical Density, This study has 57.83% and 54.14% for service firms and manufacturing firms respectively, which are lexically more dense than Syarif and Putri's (2018) findings (51.19%). To, et al. (2013) had the lexical density of 53.2%, 53.8%, and 46.3% 45.5% for four texts. This study has the higher Lexical density, for both service and manufacturing firms, than those of the all texts of To, et al. (2013).
Gunning Fog (Table-3 &4) service firms indicates it is college senior standard (16), while in case of manufacturing, it is college junior (15). Both the cases it, the texts are college standard.
Flesch-Kincaid (Table-7) exhibits that both service and manufacturing firms the 12 and 11 grade levels respectively, while SMOG shows (Table-8 From the above discussion (Table-10 & 11) on the results and average level it is clear that the mission statements in respect of service statements of the firms are Professor Standard, while manufacturing firms' statements are College standard. Hence, the mission statements of the manufacturing firms are easy than those of service firms.

Conclusion and Future Research
A mission-statement is the connection between the organisation and the society. The mission statements basically are the strong motivational paths showing the organisational stakeholders the techniques and tactics of achieving the objectives. Hence, mission-statements deserve proper wording, sentence construction, grammar, and proper linguistic approaches. The mission statements are the reflections of the values, impressions and precious roles the organisations play in the society and the respective industries. The construction of the mission statements is a game of Readability and Lexical Density. Though maximum large service and manufacturing firms, are fulfilling the characteristics of Mission statements, however, the companies are not paying due attention on the Readability and the Lexical Density of the sentences (e.g. mission statements). The reasons the existence of the Business Management and Strategy ISSN 2157-6068 2020 company, the company's values, attitudes, policies, strategies etc are the crucial variables associated with the mission statements. In the business and corporate world, a huge grey area is noticed. Many researchers investigated the mission statements of various organisations and academic materials. For examples: Universities (Cortes-Sanchez, 2018), academic articles (Alegre et al., 2018), mission statements of Public organisations (Desmidt, 2016), components of the mission statements (Pearce & David, 1987), English academic text books (To, et al.,2013), academic texts (Syarif & Putri, 2018), Government web-sites (Ismail et al., 2019), definitions of knowledge management (Van Deventer, et al., 2015) etc. were the subject matter of investigation. However, this article analysed the mission statements of service and manufacturing firms. This study randomly selected 10-large organisations out of which 5-from service firms and 5-from manufacturing firms with a view to examining the Readability and Lexical Density. Basic Text Statistics were found out for both the mission statements of service firms and manufacturing firms. Gunning Fox Index (GFI), Flesch Reading score, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, SMOG, Coleman-Liau Index, Automated Readability index techniques/tools were used. The results find that, the mission statements of service firms are lexically dense than those of the manufacturing firms. The other experiments above also show that the mission statements of service firms require higher level of students/qualifications than the manufacturing firms. Really speaking, both mission statements need university or college level qualification to comprehend. Hence, there may be many stakeholders who may not have these qualifications. Hence, firms should pay attention to the simplicity, accuracy, brevity so that the statements are understandable by all the stakeholders. The future studies may extend this study by increasing the sample size and may carryout similar research in any specific industry.

SERVICE ORGANISATIONS
Consumers are our lifeblood, the centre of the doughnut. There is no substitute for quality in our service to consumers. Impeccable presentation is critical wherever Krispy Kreme is sold. We must produce a collaborative team effort that is unexcelled. We must cast the best possible image in all that we do. We must never settle for 'second best'; we deliver on our commitments. We must coach our team to ever-better results. FedEx Corporation will produce superior financial returns for its shareowners by providing high value-added logistics, transportation and related business services through focused operating companies. Customer requirements will be met in the highest quality manner appropriate to each market segment served. FedEx will strive to develop mutually rewarding relationships with its team members, partners and suppliers. Safety will be the first consideration in all operations. Corporate activities will be conducted to the highest ethical and professional standards. Citi's mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress. Our core activities are safeguarding assets, lending money, making payments and accessing the capital markets on behalf of our clients. We have 200 years of experience helping our clients meet the world's toughest challenges and embrace its greatest opportunities. We are Citi, the global bankan institution connecting millions of people across hundreds of countries and cities. Grow our global business by serving the logistics needs of customers, offering excellence and value in all that we do. Maintain a financially strong company with broad employee ownership-that provides a long-term competitive return to our shareowners. Inspire our people and business partners to do their best, offering Business Management and Strategy ISSN 2157-6068 2020 www.macrothink.org/bms 231 opportunities for personal development and success. Lead by example as a responsible, caring, and sustainable company making a difference in the communities we serve. To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

MANUFACTURING ORGANISATIONS
At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. Trustworthiness and Creativity. Beauty for all. For more than a century, we have devoted our energy and our competencies solely to one business: beauty. It is a business rich in meaning, as it enables all individuals to express their personalities, gain self-confidence and open up to others. Beauty is a language. L'Oréal has set itself the mission of offering all women and men worldwide the best of cosmetics innovation in terms of quality, efficacy and safety. By meeting the infinite diversity of beauty needs and desires all over the world. Beauty is universal. Since its creation by a researcher, the group has been pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. Its unique Research arm enables it to continually explore new territories and invent the products of the future, while drawing inspiration from beauty rituals the world over. Beauty is a science. Providing access to products that enhance well-being, mobilizing its innovative strength to preserve the beauty of the planet and supporting local communities. These are exacting challenges, which are a source of inspiration and creativity for L'Oréal. Beauty is a commitment. By drawing on the diversity of its teams, and the richness and the complementarity of its brand portfolio, L'Oréal has made the universalization of beauty its project for the years to come. L'Oréal, offering beauty for all. To add vitality to life. We meet every day needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life. We are committed to enhancing human health and wellbeing by providing contemporary and affordable medicines, manufactured in full compliance with global quality standards.