Mission statements have become a defining force in discussions of an organizational strategy. In fact, some strategists claim that a mission statement can provide an alternative to tedious work of corporate planning. This is because people define organizations by their mission statements. In fact, it is the mission statement that defines the long-term purpose of an organization in terms of its existence.
An organization’s strategies and objectives must support its mission statement. A standard mission statement should reflect the purpose of an organization, the main business agenda, principal values and beliefs, identify main stakeholders, and guiding principles on the code of conduct to direct staff how to behave. This paper takes the approach of internal transformation in defining a mission statement for Art Museum.
This is because the museum is an old organization faced with the need to change itself radically since it has no mission statement (Paul, Kenneth & John, 2004, p. 10). This mission state shall take into account the conflicting views of organizational culture at play in this scenario. This is the Art Museum mission statement.
Art Museum is a worldwide leader in integrating the community, academic affairs, and students into art. We are a leading educational resource center for all students from undergraduates to Ph.D. by combining various disciplines from engineering, mathematics, architecture to liberal arts. There is no other museum in the world that brings art to its stakeholders the way we do by integrating scholarly works and research.
The Art Museum mission statement strives to change the organization and radically provides a sense of purpose for its future directors. At the same time, it incorporates the opposing views of various stakeholders.
Accommodating conflicting expectations
Art Museum is an old organization which has come a long way with no mission statement to guide its previous directors and staff. Consequently, there are conflicting expectations among the stakeholders on what the museum should do or be.
In this regard, challenges arise on how to incorporate all these varied views and suggestions in a mission statement. It should serve as a unifying factor and at the same time avoid the risks associating it with empty statements. The organization has to get all stakeholders, especially upper level management to live up to its principles.
Art Museum has witnessed the departure of some directors under unclear circumstance. These directors adopt their own purposes to drive their visions. However, these attempts did not go down well with the senate faculty. Art Museum exhibits conflicting expectations from various quarters. A senate member from art history faculty sees no sense in making the Art Museum a community resource center.
Instead, he wants the Art Museum to appeal to the world academic community through arts. The populist economist supports the late director in his attempts to turn the Art Museum into a community resource center. At the same time, the senate from the mathematics department wants the museum to concentrate on training art historians, on its scholarly work, and on its research.
The organizational ideal culture is that the formal organization’s values and norms are to be in line with those of different workers and groups within an organization. More often than not, the norms and values of workers are opposing formal goals of the organization. The senate faculty may also not pay attention to potential contributions of its faculties. This creates an organizational culture trouble.
The mission statement identifies and incorporates all the essential elements of contributions made by faculties. The mission statement integrates elements which acts as unifying factors and ignores those which discriminate the community against accessing the resources of Art Museum.
For instance, the mission statement covers community services, academic affairs and students while appealing to the worldwide community. Conversely, the mission statement ignores those contributions which seek to limit the potential of Art Museum such as restricting it to serve only the elites.
Occasionally, conflicting expectations are counterproductive. This is where the management most vital and difficult functions come in i.e. mending the rift between purposeful needs of the organization and the informal and varied norms of the staff (Miles & Snow, 2003, p. 23).
The Art Museum lacked cohesiveness among the faculties and directors. Only cohesive organization is strong enough to enforce its norms. Lack of cohesiveness creates an environment where an organization cannot enforce its norms captured in its mission statement.
Art Museum management can create cohesiveness among faculties by allowing members to have wide consultations and agreements, the senate should have full participation and direct creation of the group standards such as the mission statement.
Members should have a high esteem for the success of the organizational purpose. Above all, the faculties should experience success in goal achievement and protection of the museum core values (Roberts, 2004, 281).
However, cohesiveness does not mean the senate faculty shall accommodate all the members’ ideas. For instance, some members of the senate reject suggestions that come from different members who express different views. There is also no guarantee that suggestions of the dominant group will be supportive of the formal organizational goals.
Management structure
The culture of an organization consists of norms, values and attitudes of the individuals who constitute an organization. Culture reveals what are essential, expected behavior and the mind-set of the individuals. Art Museum shows differing organizational cultures at play.
There are cultures of the faculty senate, the Art History Department, the Mathematics Department, liberal arts, economists, the graduate students in art history, and the undergraduate students among other cultures (Jeff & Hartman, 2002, p. 85).
It is necessary to mention that formal management structure comes after formulation of a mission statement. Management structure builds the culture of an organization by laying foundations, showing planned relationships, and providing outline boundaries in which organizational activities occur.
The management structure needs to accommodate widely varying expectations at play by different departments and beneficiaries. The management structure does not have to accommodate all the conflicting expectations of the constituents (Miner, 2005, p. 147).
There are two approaches to designing organizational structure, namely; mechanistic and organic structure approaches. Traditionally, structures describe authority relations, power delegations, communication paths, and among others. The mechanistic structure instills single line of reporting and communication, which workers follow rigidly. Workers in the same horizontal structures have no authority over each other.
Conversely, the organic structure tends to have no rigid and fixed hierarchy. Staff may work together to accomplish a task, and then turn to others. They may work in more than a single project at a time.
They may have a boss, many bosses, or none at all. In this case, the organization expects them to exercise self-leadership. The Art Museum shall adopt an organic management structure due to the independence nature of the various faculties. Below is the proposed management structure.
References
Jeff, H. & Hartman, S. (2002). Organizational Behavior. New York: The Haworth Press.
Miles, R. & Snow, C. (2003). Organizational Strategy, Structure and Process. California: Stanford University Press.
Miner, J. B. (2005). Organizational behavior I: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Paul, D., Kenneth, S. & John, R. (2004). Strategic Management: Issues and Cases. Malden: MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Roberts, J. (2004). The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth. New York: Oxford University Press.
Appendix: The proposed Management structure
