The representation of mission on institutional and corporate websites : a case of migration of discursive practices

In most Western countries, citizens’ trust and confidence in Public Administration (PA) as a professional agent of the government suffered a significant decline during the 1970s and 1980s. By the end of the 20th century the crisis in public organizations were viewed both as a policy and managerial failure. As a consequence, public service underwent reform, and was reconfigured according to new criteria of good management and effective leadership. To meet public needs and expectations, public administrators were required to formulate strategies, articulate their mission and strengthen marketing and customer-orientation, championing a vision of the ‘New Public Management’ or ‘Neo-Managerialism’. This rapid change has penetrated the UK public sector, but it can also be seen as a part of a more wider process of socio-cultural change affecting the business sector as well. Just as public organizations are increasingly adopting business-like approaches and logics, so are companies giving greater attention to social responsibility. Thus, this perspective suggests that ‘sector blurring’ is indeed a reality: no longer can organizations be easily classified by conventional labels and new concepts of publicness and privateness are evolving. This paper presents preliminary observations and findings from an exploratory analysis conducted on a set of city council websites, based in the UK, and a similar set of websites for businesses based in the UK. Focus is given to the presence or absence of common features connected to a standalone or incorporated mission which provide insights into the processes of change in institutional and corporate discursive practices and about the functions and values of the organizations. On this view, the analysis draws on work grounded in the awareness that language use is a form of social practice that shapes society.