Many companies spend significant time and effort developing a mission statement — complete with vision, values, goals, and strategies. Ask managers whether their firm’s mission statement lives in the company day-to-day or whether it lies neglected in someone’s desk drawer. In too many instances, the truthful answer is: “The vision is more rhetoric than real.”
This is not because the company’s managers are neglectful or “bad people.” Indeed, most managers would say they are doing their best to exemplify the values in these documents and achieve the vision. However, in-depth investigations of company practices, even in the best of firms, frequently reveal large gaps between stated values and daily practices.
We propose that auditing a company’s core operating practices by using a responsibility audit may help to bridge this rhetoric-reality gap. Such an audit assesses a company’s overall performance against its core values, ethics policy, internal operating practices, management systems, and, most importantly, the expectations of key stakeholders — owners, employees, suppliers, customers, and local communities. Such audits alert companies to responsible business practices that will help them simultaneously “do well (financially) and do good (socially).”
Vision versus Practice
As part of a recent beta test of a responsibility audit process, eight companies assessed those operating practices that related to implementing their stated vision, values, and mission. All eight had... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Get a premium subscription today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
More Info.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article as a PDF.
Subscribe today to read the most recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
Upgrade to premium
Current Subscribers: Do you subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review? Register for online access.
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription—access to the entire archive of articles.
