Second, I want to say that the 10% of a company's values/missions that aren't tautological marketing catch phrases are actually -incredibly- important, and can directly contribute to a company's success. The fact 90% deviate is more to do with companies not realizing how important it is to not just be marketing fluff, than any intrinsic value or lack thereof of having such a statement.
Fundamentally, a company has many decisions where they have to choose A or B, not both. Oftentimes these decisions are made at a level the CEO or similar has no insight into. To be able to ensure people make the right decisions and are all pulling in the same direction, a culture has to be adopted. Mission statements, value statements, etc, are the only tool the CEO really has to shape that culture, beyond simply hiring into the roles directly underneath him (which is hard to do without insight into what is going on beneath -them-). The Culture Code has a great segment in it about how Johnson & Johnson's credo (specifically, "We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services") led to its handling of the cyanide in the tylenol incident, which saved the product line (when every analyst was like "that's done, no one will trust Tylenol again"), as well as introduced the now ubiqitous tamper proof packaging.
To go back to Tylenol example -- reading the news at the time, it looks like the company was praised for quick product recall and good communications. All of those are top-level decisions, and I am sure CEO had insight into them.
So I suspect you are confusing cause and effect here -- the cause was top management's beliefs, and the effects were (1) nice-sounding credo, and (2) good reaction of Tylenol accident.
In other words, the company can talk all they want about "excellence in details" on their culture page -- but CEO can still say "demo is in 1 week, just disable all tests". The opposite is also true -- there plenty of companies which have mo mission page at all, but have the great code.
I'm not saying that culture doesn't exist but it exists in the decisions that are made by the people who run the companies themselves, they set the tone and precedent for how the company works and the employees take note and follow.
The decisions are important, yes. But the person at the top isn't making every decision. They may have the best intentions, but if somewhere down the chain of command someone is prioritizing the wrong thing, focusing on the wrong thing, but still doing their job okay, they won't be told to do differently or let go. Defining a focus allows their immediate superior to recognize they're not doing their job. It even allows their subordinate to tell the manager "Hey, our mission/values statement says X; are you sure we should be doing this?" and possibly fix it without escalating it (though if escalation is necessary, it also provides a reason to escalate it, and a reason for the superior to pay attention).
Corporate culture provides a framework for understanding why managers make the decisions they do, and for employees, peers, and the public to hold managers accountable for the decisions they make.
If your opinion is that the people who run companies have no constraints or influences on their decisions, I would strongly disagree with you. The Tylenol example shows the power of culture--it gave J&J leadership the license (but also the pressure) to set the correct priorities when making decisions on how to handle it.
There's a book called The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem that I really like. About half the stories in it pertain to corporate culture either positively (Merck) or negatively (Salomon Brothers).
A classic example of a difference in corporate culture (how employees contribute to quality) is illustrated by this story from This American Life:
Again, going back to the J&J case, placing their priority on their customers, their community, above their employees, and above their stockholders, meant that everyone could align in "We have to do what is safest for them, despite the cost or inconvenience to us". It would have been much easier to just issue a localized recall; they instead issued a national one. They could have pointed fingers (the addition of cyanide was, after all, not their fault); instead they took ownership over how to make their product safer. Etc.
It's not a catch all or magic bullet, but it -is- important to know, when making decisions, what to prioritize for.
Does every/any company adhere consistently to that? Of course not; companies are made of fallible humans.
But how do you -ever- bind a group of people together to pull in the same direction, -especially- when it's at the expense of short term gains, for unclear long term gains? By creating a guide, a set of principles. That's what a mission/values/etc statement is supposed to be. Not just marketing bullshit, but something that helps determine what action to take. "We're gonna be the best" isn't useful, "We're going to prioritize X" is; it's a guiding star to recalibrate against. Yes, it takes someone to point out when you drift, and corrective action to be taken, but without it, you have no hope whatsoever of staying on a given course.
Instead of doing the minimal amount they had to do, they took it a step above. It would have been perfectly okay, and business as usual, to recall in Chicago, and then to do nothing. Instead they did a nation-wide recall, and didn't reintroduce the product until they had a solution to prevent it from happening again.
I don't have the case study details in front of me, but just as an aside, companies can be sued and will lose if the plaintiff can prove they were negligent; for example, not taking reasonable steps to prevent tampering.
The one I always think of as good is "Move fast and break things". Not that it necessarily is a good idea, but rather that you can quite clearly use it to help make decisions like "do we launch now to capture a transient opportunity or later to ensure full QA?"
However, I am convinced that having values and employing them everyday can massively help to recruit and retain the right people, and, to communicate efficiently in large organizations. I’m talking about those companies, where in any meeting anyone can speak up freely and say such things as “We should be doing this. This is against our values”.
I think those companies will have a strategic advantage in the long run. And, for me personally, I find it much more rewarding to work for such a company.
"Define your company values and mission" 90% of these are tautological marketing catch lines, anybody with a brain will be able to smell the bullsh*t on this one.
Also keep in mind that their tagline is that they "create enterprise-level search visibility tools for internet samurais of the future". Samurais - enough said.