The topic of vision, mission and objective in agile literature review diagramming: a discussion

The topic of vision, mission and objectives [VMO] in agile literature review approach [ALRA] diagramming: a discussion:

Some students want to examine the topic of vision, mission and objectives [VMO] in their dissertation projects. They suggest that the VMO concern be located in Zone 1 of the agile literature review approach [ALRA] diagrams (i.e. management concerns diagram and the theoretical framework diagrams]. To start with, zone 1 deals with environmental drivers. These factors influence an organization but the organization cannot "control" nor "create" them. VMO is formulated by the top management of an organization, under the stewardship of its board of directors. It is, by definition, not an environmental driver.

There are two ways to deal with the topic of VMO, if it is an important one to be examined in the student's dissertation project, namely, the explicit way and the implicit way:

The explicit way involves introducing a zone 4 [VMO] in the management concerns diagram and the corresponding theoretical frameworks. Zone 4 in this case has linkages with Zones 1, 2 and 3a/3b. This way of treating VMO is mainly useful for dissertation projects with VMO being treated as a core-focus-domain item.

Statement examples: 

Management concern [zone 4]: Concern about the VMO of the company being unclear (or unattractive).

Theoretical framework [zone 4]: to evaluate the VMO of ABC Ltd in terms of its feasibility and attractiveness to the stakeholders involved.

The implicit way is to bring up the the topic of VMO in the literature review and findings analysis of the student's dissertation report. This way of treating VMO is more appropriate when it is not a core-focus-domain item in the dissertation project work.

Two more questions to consider:

Question 1: who is to decide whether VMO is a core-focus-domain item or not? It is decided by the dissertation project student who is sufficiently informed about the management concerns and the prevailing situation of the organization under investigation.

Question 2: what if (a) the topic of VMO is not a core-focus-domain item but still of some significance to the dissertation investigation and (b) the student feels confident to work with ALRA diagrams with 4 zones [i.e. a bit more complicated than  3-zone diagrams]?. In this case the explicit way can be employed. This case is a borderline one on the choice of implicit and explicit ways.