A Discourse Analysis of How Moroccan Business Schools Establish Their Institutional Identities Through Mission Statements

Abstract

This article investigates how Moroccan business and management schools construct their institutional identities, educational objectives, and social roles through their mission statements. In the context of the growing use of digital communication by educational institutions, mission statements constitute an important form of institutional discourse through which schools present what they seek to achieve, the qualities they aim to develop in students, and their relationship with the professional and social environment. The study focuses on the mission statements of five established Moroccan business and management schools and adopts a qualitative content-analysis approach. The analysis treats the mission statement as the primary unit of analysis and identifies concepts that are explicitly communicated by the institutions. Recurring concepts are grouped into broader analytical categories related to educational and professional objectives, graduate characteristics, institutional and developmental responsibilities, and local and international orientations. The findings show that business schools differ in how they communicate their identities and what they consider important in their institutional missions. There is an uneven distribution of themes, with only one universal theme shared by all schools: managers and leaders. This suggests that business schools do not share the same model of what a business school should focus on as its central purpose. The study contributes to the understanding of educational advertising and institutional communication by showing how business schools use mission discourse not merely to describe their educational offerings but also to construct institutional identities, define desired graduate profiles, and communicate their intended contribution to the economic and social environment. The analysis of Moroccan business-school mission statements therefore provides an opportunity to examine not only what these institutions claim to provide but also how they view their relationship with the wider professional and social environment.