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The Ashridge Mission Model
Given a certain degree of confusion surrounding what an organisational mission should encompass and achieve, Campell and Yeung conducted a two-year research project with 53 large, successful companies in the early 1990s in order to try to devise a meaningful mission structure. The fruits of their labour is a framework that has come to be known as the Ashridge Mission Model. Here we examine the model in detail.
Campbell and Yeung’s definition of an organisation’s mission has four linked elements: purpose; strategy; behaviour standards and values as shown below:

The Ashridge Mission Model
Source: Campell and Yeung, Creating a Sense of Mission, Long Range Planning Vol 24, No. 4, 1990, p 13
1. Purpose
Some organisations find the question ‘why does the company exist?’ so difficult to answer that they actively avoid debating the issue. Where a broad concensus on organisational purpose does exist, however, Campbell and Yeung believe that organisations can be categorised into three different types, namely:
· Organisations whose purpose is to benefit shareholders, with strategic decisions governed largely by their potential impact on shareholder returns.
· Organisations that exist to satisfy all stakeholders. Such companies tend to do what they can to be responsible towards shareholders, customers, employees and the environment, whether for altruistic reasons, or to at least be seen to be doing the right thing.
· Organisations with a ‘higher ideal’. While such organisations are aware of the need to satisfy their stakeholders, their raison d’etre will focus on a higher (often moral) purpose. The Body Shop whose mission is to ‘dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change’ is a typical case in