About Company Mission, Values and History: Meaning, 7 Core Values and Examples

Short answer on mission, values and history

The mission of a company explains why it exists and whom it serves. Values express how people in the company should act while they deliver that mission. History shows how these ideas played out over time. When the three line up, readers see a credible story rather than a slogan.

When did companies start using mission statements

Leaders have always talked about why their organizations exist, but the modern mission statement began to appear more often from the 1960s onward. Business schools, management books and annual reports helped spread the idea that organizations should publish a short statement covering who they serve and what they aim to achieve.

By the 1980s and 1990s many large companies had formal mission statements on office walls, in employee handbooks and in marketing material. Internet About pages then became the main place where visitors saw mission, vision and values together.

What are the values and mission of a company

The mission of a company answers questions such as:

• Which customers or groups do we serve.
• What problem or need do we address for them.
• What kind of result do we want to create for those customers and for society.

Values then set out a small group of statements about behavior and choices while working toward that mission. For example, values might describe how people treat customers and colleagues, how they handle data, how they deal with mistakes and how they think about profit and long term impact.

Together, mission and values guide decisions on hiring, investment, product design and service. They also influence how company history is told, because events that match the mission and values deserve more space than random milestones.

What is mission, vision and values

Many About pages now group three statements: mission, vision and values.

• Mission explains why the company exists right now, in simple language.
• Vision describes the state the company is working toward, often five to ten years ahead.
• Values describe how people should behave while moving from mission toward vision.

Some organizations keep these three separate, while others blend them into a single story of vision, mission and goals. Either approach can work as long as readers can see what the company does today, where it is going and how it expects people to act along the way.

Seven values that are important to business

Each organization needs its own list of values, but the seven values below appear often in successful companies. They fit well in vision, mission and values examples for business.

1. Integrity saying the truth, keeping promises and following rules even when it is costly.
2. Customer focus understanding customer needs and making choices that create steady value for them.
3. Accountability taking ownership for results, decisions and mistakes.
4. Learning improving products, services and skills through feedback and experimentation.
5. Respect treating employees, partners and communities fairly.
6. Collaboration working across teams and functions to solve shared problems.
7. Long term thinking balancing short term metrics with the health of the company and its relationships over time.

About company mission values history examples often show how these values appeared in key moments for the organization, such as major investments, crises or product launches.

About company mission values history examples

Many websites now include a dedicated page titled About, Our Story or Mission, Vision and Values of an organization. Strong pages tend to share three features.

• A short, clear mission statement in plain language, not full of jargon.
• A list of three to seven values, each with one or two sentences that show what the value looks like in action.
• A history section that marks turning points and links them back to the mission and values.

For example, a history timeline might highlight when the company entered a new market, developed a key service or handled a difficult period. The text can then connect those events to customer focus, learning or long term thinking.

Vision, mission and values examples for organizations

Leaders looking for vision, mission and values examples often start with well known companies. Public sources, including Forbes vision statement collections and annual reports, show how large organizations describe their aims and values.

When reviewing examples:

• Notice which statements are short and concrete and which feel vague.
• Check whether the history of the business seems to match the statements.
• Use the examples as reference, not as text to copy. Each company still needs its own wording.

A simple internal exercise is to ask managers to write a one sentence mission, one sentence vision and three to five values, then compare drafts. The goal is to find phrasing that many people recognize as accurate, not to impress readers with complex language.

Importance of vision and mission statements and PDFs

Some boards see vision and mission statements as formalities, often kept in a PDF and rarely read. In practice, clear statements can help in several areas:

• Explaining the company quickly to recruits, investors and partners.
• Setting boundaries for which opportunities fit the business and which do not.
• Aligning day to day choices in product, operations and people decisions.
• Providing a stable reference during leadership changes or large projects.

Vision and mission statements PDFs are most useful when they are backed by simple tools such as hiring questions, performance criteria and leadership habits that echo the same ideas.

Organizations that want help updating their mission, vision and values can start with workshops that involve both senior leaders and people from key functions, then refine the wording with support from communications and HR teams.