Authors: Paraskevi Boufounou, Nikolaos Lambos

Title: Organizational Culture in the Greek Banking System: Empirical Evidence and Strategic Implications

Abstract

The present paper presents the empirical findings of an OCAI questionnaire survey carried out amongst the employees of the Greek Banking system (from the four systemic banks), exploring their views of the existing organizational culture and the desired one in the future. It was found that currently in the two Banks “market culture” prevails, on the contrary “hierarchy culture” prevails in the remaining two. Furthermore, in all four Banks “clan culture” is preferred to prevail in the future (5 years ahead).  Comparison with a similar study carried out 3 years ago reveals that currently the spirit of “competitiveness” and the “increase of productivity” tend to dominate amongst bank employees, against the “compliance and bureaucracy” approach, which is a well established attitude in the banking sector.

These findings are of immense importance for the four Greek systemic Banks as they have experienced numerous M&As over the past few years and consequently organizational culture issues play a key role in formulating their strategic plans.