The study of Ashridge Sense of Mission reveals that a strong mission sense makes employees at all levels to perceive their job as a way of contributing to something that they have faith in. Google functions with a great sense of mission and this can be evidenced by the employees despite the level they operate. This strong sense of mission significantly contributes to the realization of their objective of becoming innovation leaders. The Ashridge Sense of Mission Model puts forward four components which resonate and reinforce each other. They can be used to provide insight on Google's mission strategy and include: purpose, strategy, values, policies and behavioral standards. .
Purpose is categorized into three groups, according to the benefit the organization has to its entities: shareholder value perspective, stakeholder value perspective and for the benefit of a better deal which entails going beyond just satisfying the stakeholders' needs. Values are the moral principles and beliefs that lie behind the culture of an organization. They provide meaning to the behavioral standards and norms in the organization. They further act as strong motivators and provide a rationale for behavior; an aspect that is just as strong as strategy. At Google, for example, a Sense of Mission has been illustrated with the way the employees' personal values have been aligned with the values of the company. This has been illustrated in the small self-managing teams whereby about 50% of the organization's employees work in small teams averaging three engineers per team (Grant 2013: 660). This has been extended to larger projects including Gmail which has 30 people, but is broken into teams comprising of three or four people. .
Similarly, Google values entrepreneurial and technological dynamism, and this has led to initiatives that extend beyond the organization and access of information. Since the inception of Gmail in 2004, for instance, Google provided a wide range of services and software for communication, creation and the manipulation of 2D and 3D images, production of documents, creation of web pages and management of time.
