Hansapanga väärtuste kommunikatsioon
Date
2003
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Abstract
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Attitudes, values and convictions that are sometimes called “culture” play a big role in
the behaviour and development of people. Ronald Inglehart (1995: 375), a great
researcher of culture and values, has declared that culture is an important causal
element that helps to form the society, but at the same time values constitute an
element of culture, so their change enables us to draw conclusions about changes in
societal culture (Vihalemm 1997; 265). Many researches have endorsed that in today’s
economy culture must have been taken into consideration. Paul du Gay and Michael
Pryke (2002: 1-2) say that there is a “cultural turn” where culture intervenes in
economic and organisational life. It is through culture that people change the way they
do things and how they see the world. Alan Warde (2002) calls this process
culturalisation of economy that mainly stems from a perception of consumption as
increasingly cultural.
This paper proceeds from the presumptions resulted from the author’s seminar paper.
It was assumed that in Estonia the materialist and post-materialist values occur at the
same time. As people, who work in the organisations are a part of the society, it was
assumed that the same processes take also place in the organisations – although post-
materialist tendencies are occurring in the core values of Hansabank, the employees
are motivated besides emotional values also by material goods, not only by
organisational culture and values. The second assumption said that in spite of
emphasising internal communication of Hansabank’s values, it has not been resulting. Proceeded from the assumptions four main questions are researched in this paper: how
important are officially defined core values of Hansabank to top management and to
the heads of business units, how these values are realised in different fields and are
there any value conflicts between business units, for example between Hansa Leasing
and the rest of the bank.
Therefore the main goal of this paper is to explain the role of organisation’s core
values to employees in different fields of Hansabank and to find out the aspects where
value conflict is arisen and what are the consequences of the value conflict between
different business units. For getting adequate answers to the question, the main research method is qualitative text analysis. There are 15 interviews with top
management made in 2002 and 6 with the heads of business units made in 2003. This
paper is focussed on different brand theories (Jean Baudrillard, Mary Douglas, Celia
Lury, Don Slater, Jean-Noël Kapferer, Philip Kotler) and approaches of values (Milton
Rokeach, Shalom Schwartz, Geert Hofstede and Ronald Inglehart).
The research showed that the core values are perceived subconsciously as abstract
principles and they are not announced in the decision making process. From the
value’s point of view, Hansabank is “spilntered” organisation. The survey cleared that
there is so called “state in the state” phenomena that is expressed by di fferent
behvaiours of the employers in Hansa Leasing and Hansa Markets compared to the
rest of the bank. The conflict of values is induced by a clash between core values and
former organisatsional culture. It appears in internal competition, where individual
needs always come first.
Internal communication of values poses the biggest problems in Hansabank. Gossip
and absence of official position do not support openess and honesty. In client relations
these values are inhibited by laws that insist certain confidentiality from the bank, also
by unappropriate behaviour of Hansa Leasing that affects the image of the whole
bank. The values are well communicated in the fields that are regulated by normative
frames – with the public and competitors the process is regulated by accepted
standards of ethical Public Relations and Stock Exchange. The biggest difference between top management and heads of business units occurred
in different perception of values. Top managers saw themselves as definers of values,
but not as imparters. The heads of business units apprehended their role as introducers
of values, although they felt that they were displaced from the defining process. The
research showed also other conflicts. The top manager accounted innovation as the
most important value, the heads of business units appreciated quality.
Organisational culture is influenced by the environment. The changes in the value
structure in society show resemblance to what is happening in Hansabank – besides
materlist values there is a rise of postmaterialist values. It ensues that defining the
organisatsional values and modelling organisatsional culture is a continuous process.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd