Many organisations do have a corporate mission statement which is a declaration of the company's 'reason for being'.

The overall corporate mission statement should be communicated to all.

That process allowed them to hammer out a radically changed corporate mission statement in less than two hours.

He once defined the corporate mission statement as, "a long awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly."

Hardly a corporate mission statement for a standard-bearer of the new economy, but it could be spun to Microsoft's advantage.

Consider those ubiquitous corporate mission statements.

"Our corporate mission statement is 'the shameless pursuit of worldwide critical acclaim, whilst ensuring our staff can pay their rent'," says Wedgwood.

At the time, eyebrows were raised by its corporate mission statement: "Lincoln said you can fool some of the people all the time, and that's good enough for us."

From my I.S.P.'s corporate mission statement, as shown on the official Montgomery Township municipal Web site: Take care of our customers.

"The corporate mission statements about treating people like assets are like water on parched soil for these fellows," said J. Leslie Robinson, chairman of the master executive council of the Air Line Pilots Association at the Trump Shuttle.

And individual companies, including industry giants like Orvis, Patagonia and REI, have made significant contributions to conservation causes (for example, Orvis's corporate mission statement includes a specific, economic and ethical mandate to support conservation projects and organizations).

"My sense is that most companies in the United States now have some kind of declaration of this type," said Jeffrey Abrahams, the author of "The Mission Statement Book: 301 Corporate Mission Statements From America's Top Companies."