Intellectual connections in mission statements scholarship: a future research agenda

Purpose This study aims to explore the intellectual connections of mission statement research to identify the influential domains of source knowledge and emergent areas of research for future studies. Design/methodology/approach The authors deployed bibliometric methods, namely, citation, co-citation and network analysis. The authors collected data from the Scopus and Web of Science databases and analyzed the connections of the most influential articles. Findings The authors identified four knowledge domains that informed the mission statements literature: guidance on mission statement development, the value of mission statements, mission statements and organizational issues, mission statement content and communication. And the authors spotted four opportunities for knowledge advancement based on theoretical frameworks, performance measures, content and context. Practical implications Practitioners should think beyond the immediate benefits of mission statements, such as performance and legitimacy improvement. Instead, they should focus on long-term benefits, information advantages and democratizing the development phase of mission statements. Originality/value Mission statements have attracted scholarly attention over the past 40 years. Despite the formation of a considerable body of knowledge, intellectual connections of mission statement research have been largely neglected. Previous studies had a narrow focus or insufficient coverage of the literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first full-scale bibliometric study on the intellectual connections of the mission statements literature.