Internationalisation as an explicit objective in the declared vision and mission of the 500 largest companies in Colombia

Abstract

The present study is of empirical nature and aims at establishing, through a content analysis of the corporate vision and mission statements of the top 500 companies in Colombia, whether internationalization is considered amongst the strategic objectives of such organizations. For this purpose, the vision and mission statements of 398 companies were classified to determine if internationalization can be considered an end, that is beingn explicitly included in the vision statement; or if internationalization can be considered a mean, that appears to be clearly included in the mission statement. As a result, it was found that internationalization has been clearly included in the vision statement of 151 companies (37,9%), in the mission statement of 70 companies (17,6%), and for 44, out of the 398 analyzed cases, it has been included in both types of statements (11,1%).