1 This is a pre-print of an article published in Review of Managerial Science. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11846-019-00355-2#citeas Impact of mission statement components on social enterprises’ performance Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent Marta Mas-Machuca Patricia Guix Universitat Internacional de Catalunya Abstract Social enterprises mix economic and social objectives, forming a bridge between non-profit and profit enterprises. Mission statements are a strategic tool that can provide a company with a purpose of being, a “being” that communicates the core of the business to internal and external stakeholders. In this paper we aim to investigate the link between mission statements and performance in social enterprises. The sample includes 39 social enterprises located in Spain. Our findings indicate that those firms for which the mission statement explicitly considers the customers and the product/service offer are more likely to exhibit higher economic performance. Keywords: social enterprises, mission statement, qualitative comparative analysis, performance. JEL: C35, L19, L31 1. Introduction The concept of social enterprise (SE) is quite new and, during the past 20 years, has gained increasing interest in various regions of the world (Defourny and Nyssens 2010, 2012; Kraus et al. 2014). In Europe the notion of SE first appeared during the 1980s, but the term started to be used in the 1990s. This type of company is situated within the third sector, settled between the market, public policies, and civil societies (Defourny and Nyssens 2006). As expressed by Sassmannshausen and Volkmann (2018: 1), “in a world that faces many social challenges and with governments that are often unable to provide solutions, motivated social