Practice what you preach: the effects of mission alignment on organizational performance

Purpose Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation encourages business schools to exhibit alignment within their mission, strategies and outcomes to achieve success. The present study aims to explore the idea of mission alignment and how it may serve as an important moderator to the relationship between organizational resources and school performance as measured through business school rank. Design/methodology/approach Our study utilizes the AACSB International business school survey (BSQ) data to analyze the mission statements of accredited business schools and capture data on organizational resources. We also created an index of mission alignment to gauge congruency between the stated mission and strategic focus. Our performance measure was the U.S. News and World Report undergraduate business school programs ranking value. Findings Our results show mission alignment on its own has little direct impact on organizational performance. However, when mission statement alignment and resource allocations are combined, they interact to influence organizational performance. Originality/value Our research demonstrates that resource allocation decisions and mission alignment are two important attributes of an organization and that mission alignment has the potential to leverage an organization’s resources and capabilities to improve performance.