Mission Statements in Top Higher Education Institutions—What Do They Have in Common?

Universities started to play a crucial role in the social and economic life, as in the knowledge economy they contribute highly with the scientific, technological and economic knowledge they produce to the development of businesses and of the society as a whole. It is acknowledged that “higher education is facing un-precedent challenges in defining its role in society and in the economy” (OECD 2012)asuniversities have to perform for both internal stakeholders (Genc 2012; Nicolescu 2011), as well as for external stakeholders, by participating to the improvement of different categories of services at society level (Lopez and Martin 2018; Androniceanu et al. 2020). In such a context, universities started to use business like practices, so that to be able to adjust their management to the new challenges posed by the environment. This involves the internalization of strategic planning principles and activities at university level, that also involves the design of missions and their written form, mission statements. The paper aims to provide a thematic oriented understanding of the missions of top universities in the world according to the content of their mission statements.