Business Mission/Purposes and Objectives

We need to ask why the business organisation or system exists. What is its mission or purpose and what are its objectives? These may be defined in

• the business's articles of incorporation
• or in a mission statement published in an annual report or communicated to staff.
• Detailed business plans may exist which spell out objectives and strategic programmes of the organisation as a whole and the contributions of its various parts.
• Above all the business objectives can be identified from what key players in the business say and what they do.

• Are declared purposes and operational objectives always in line?
• Do goals and purposes clearly unite the system by guiding the behaviour of its members?
• Are the goals and purposes out-dated?
• Who defines them?
• Are they neutral?
• How does power to decide these manifest itself?
• What are the roots of such power?

Organisational objectives are variously defined by these who own or control it or on the receiving end of product delivery or service. The organisation's outputs (results, contributions, evaluative measures) are compared with objectives (stated or notional) to determine organisational success. They are also compared with with similar and perhaps rival organisations (benchmarking).

Can you define the typical objectives of a business?

Effort is invested in achieving two types of objective to ensure organisational fitness and readiness to respond to environmental turbulence and uncertaintly (internal and external):-

• maintenance objectives
• improvement objectives.

Many performance matters relate to cyclical events (patterned) typically resolved by the budgetary cycle developed as an adaptive response to commonly occuring control and allocation problems which require standard, risk-minimising procedures. Other objectives stem from forecasting and analysis of events/trends and comparision against standards.

How stable is the organisation? If it is a homeostatic system in 'dynamic equilibrium with its environment' then learning and adaptation arguably should occur with minimum alarm and fluctuation to keep the organisationa overall in balance. Strategic plans, policies and agreed operational systems represent the results of analysis into the organisation's current health or status.

In corporate planning terms we could use SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to appraise corporate performance and contributions of each organisational function against defined standards of success: profitability, market growth, use of assets, service development etc. If trends are found to be problematic and threatening then a planned response can be made with new objectives set to guide actions of organisational members and with allocation of resources to achieve what has to be done.