The importance of business mission statement in Chinese cultures is a wide and profound subject involving culture, history and business environment etc. As to such a complicated subject, we would like to share some of our opinions in brief.

Firstly, the most interesting point about the development and changes of business mission statement in China is the change in its expressions.

Different from western, Chinese enterprise’s business mission statement gradually evolves from being implicit to being explicit with development of the society. Because of the implication and self-restrain advocated by Chinese culture, most Chinese enterprises’ business mission statements are relatively softened in expressions, which are unlike those of western enterprises emphasizing on explicit forms and strong emotions. In early ages, Chinese enterprises did not clearly explain their business missions. They usually demonstrated their insisted ideals and pursued objectives in aspects of economics, culture and social responsibility in forms of trade name or others. Take the famous Chinese medicine manufacturing and distribution enterprise “Tong Ren Tang” for instance. It was founded in 1669 and its trade name “Tong Ren” means “to cultivate generosity and morality, and to be helpful and preserve health”, which is the very business mission statement by itself.

Gradually, more and more Chinese enterprises are forming their own matured business mission statements by learning from the west and introducing western management theories into their business. Tong Ren Tang has explicitly expressed its objective, mission and management ideal: The enterprise’s objective - To be a large-scaled medical product conglomerate with strong international competitiveness by its green famous medical brand products supported by hi-tech, high culture added and high market share. The enterprise’s mission - Propagate Chinese medical culture, take the lead in “green medicine” trend, and promote the quality of human life and living. Management ideal - One heart and one mind, great techniques and benevolent atmosphere.

Secondly, let’s talk about the influence imposed by external environment on business mission statement.

Enterprises’ development objectives and directions are mainly determined by the marketing environment. Diversified environments bear different business ideals and objectives of the enterprise..

In China, which is a developing country, as the marketing environment is immature and the conditions of economy, policies and laws often change, it requires the enterprise to adjust and change internal structure, culture as well as developing objective and direction to adapt to external environment and marketing requirements. For some enterprises, business missions may be biased, just aiming for pure economic profits while ignoring the objectives of the enterprises in cultures, responsibilities, ideals and so like. So a good business mission can only be established with the sound operation objective and environment.

In addition, because of width of Chinese territory, there is the inadaptability when applying the development strategies in south for the development in north. This inadaptability is resulted from the differences in regional cultures and policies. So the business mission statement shall be adjusted according to territorial characteristics. For example, the enterprises should adjust development objective to suit local policies, or adjust enterprise culture to fit the local culture. Therefore, the research on environment is greatly important especially in China.

Interestingly, the environmental influence makes enterprise’s scale and business mission have some latent correlation. Under the mature commercial environment in the west, a medium-sized enterprise could have a comprehensive expression of its business mission, because the whole external environment can ensure the social security for enterprises’ stable development. By contrast in China, usually only large-scaled enterprises have explicit business mission statement and propagate them to the public. As such large-scaled enterprises generally emerge in monopolized industries with fairly strong power, they’re less susceptible to the influence from external environmental change. Besides, social public’s expectations on these large-scaled enterprises are higher than those on medium and small ones. Thus, the large-scaled enterprises, such as PetrolChina, Sinopec and other large-scaled listed enterprises, normally have explicit business mission statement.

Finally, the enterprises should put various factors for realizing the business mission into consideration, including the favorable conditions as well as risks. With these considerations, the business mission statement can be a feasible and practical object and standard to inspire the enterprise’s energy and motives, rather than an unrealistic and boastful slogan.