Mission statements in Slovene enterprises : Institutional pressures and contextual adaptation

Purpose – The paper sets out to observe the absorption of strategic management practice in a leading Central and East European (CEE) economy, and to provide insight into institutional differences influencing the content of mission statements. Design/methodology/approach – The content of mission statements from large Slovene enterprises is compared with research on US mission statements. Findings – Mission statements in Slovene firms tend to emphasize customers, shareholders, and strategic suppliers significantly less often than do US firms. Corporate reputation, customer‐market scope and quality are also mentioned significantly less often in Slovene statements. Although some gaps between the theoretical ideal and corporate practice may exist in both settings, many differences may be explained by macroeconomic volatility, industry structure, and institutional environments. Research limitations/implications – Although the Slovene sample size is smaller than comparable US studies, it is an equivalent sample of the two nations' largest firms. The time difference between the Slovene and US samples is not a critical issue in this study since it mimics the time delay between the behaviour of the US firms and the subsequent behaviour of Slovene firms in writing mission statements. Practical implications – The conclusions can help managers in US multinational firms to better understand some implicit differences in understanding organisations and their relationships with the business and social environment when they do business with firms from CEE. Originality/value – The paper presents what are differences between Slovene and American companies regarding mission statements content and stakeholders involved and it gives some possible explanations for them based on cultural and historical differences.