The discursive construal of purpose by means of competence in German and English corporate mission statements

Abstract: The discursive construal of purpose by means of competence in German and English corporate mission statements The current chapter shows the results of an ongoing research project into the discursive construal of corporate identity in German and English mission statements. More specifically, it focuses on the correlation between two key concepts that are at the core of effective mission statements, viz. purpose and competence. The corpus analysis shows that the concept of competence includes at least the qualities of volition and ability, two notions which are jointly described as subject-inherent in studies on modal semantics. The data show that the notions of ability and volition are means to achieve a purpose or to solve a problem. But also other means lie at the basis of successful achievement of the purpose and the desired future position stated in a mission statement. On the same level as expressions of volition and ability these different means (or paths) towards achievement include reference to social participants. These different means towards achievement have resulted in the threefold basic typology of competence which we propose as not just (a) volition and (b) ability, but also a third category (c) social participant-related means for corporate purpose, hence social competence. The basic threefold typology and the more fine grained subclassification have provided us with an overall typology which formed the framework for systematic analysis of the corpus data and for answering our research question, viz. how expressions of competence support the realization of goals in mission statement texts. On a theoretical level we hope that this study may also illustrate a relevant connection between linguistic semantics, more specifically the field of modality, and a broader discourse analytical approach on the one hand and management studies on the other. On an practical level the findings and proposed typology of competence may give rise to guidelines for corporate communication practitioners in terms of contents and strategies for writing mission statement texts. Short title: Competence as means for purpose in mission statements Keywords: discursive construal, corporate identity, purpose, means for purpose, competence, ability, willingness / volition, subject-inherent modality, social, corporate mission statement / Leitbild, German, English.status: publishe