A Comparative Analysis of the Corporate Ideologies of Banks Operating in the Republic of Croatia

Abstract Research background Corporate ideology is perceived as a set of fundamental beliefs held by company members about how the company and its members should behave in relation to one another and the outside world. In this paper, corporate ideology is treated as the basis for creating an organization’s identity and as an extremely important factor in its success. Purpose The aim of this paper is to analyze the corporate ideologies of banks operating in the Republic of Croatia, to classify different ideologies, and finally, to determine what kind of identity the surveyed banks communicate through their corporate ideologies. Research methodology A comparative and content analysis are applied as qualitative methods of research of an interpretative character. Results The corporate ideologies of two of the analyzed banks (ZABA and Erste) are described as social institutionalism, and PBZ’s ideology is labeled as social corporatism. Detected corporate ideologies do not serve to build the authenticity of banks’ identities. Novelty The main novelty of this research is in the methodology of reaching corporate ideologies. Unlike previous works on corporate ideology, in this paper public messages communicated in (digital) media were the main sources for the analysis of an organization’s core values and ideologies resulting from it. Also, a simple framework for the possible classification of different corporate ideologies was provided.