DBA 8030 Module 3 Cultural Analysis: Two Bank Cultures Under One Name Example

Two Cultures Under One Name: A Schein Analysis of a Merged Community Bank

Student Name

Doctor of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

DBA-8030: Seminar in Organizational Dynamics: Leadership, Culture, and Change

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Two Cultures Under One Name: A Schein Analysis of a Merged Community Bank

Introduction

A merger joins balance sheets in a day and cultures over years, if at all. Our community bank in Freehold absorbed a Toms River savings bank in 2025, and the turnover gap among acquired staff examined in the previous case study suggests the cultures have not joined. This analysis uses Schein's levels of culture to describe both legacy cultures, compares them with a typology of culture types, reviews evidence on how culture relates to performance and recommends what the bank's leaders should do.

Schein's Levels of Culture

Schein and Schein (2019) read a culture in three layers, from the visible to the hidden. Artifacts are what one sees and hears: buildings, dress, language, rituals. Espoused beliefs and values are what members say they value, in mission statements and in conversation. At the bottom lie premises nobody voices because everyone takes them for granted, and those premises drive daily choices. They caution that what a visitor sees is simple to record and easy to misread, because the culture itself sits in the assumptions underneath.

The Two Cultures

Gathering this picture took interviews with eleven managers from both banks, a review of each bank's recognition programs over five years and visits to six branches. The artifacts were obvious within an hour; the assumptions surfaced only when managers explained why they had made particular decisions, such as declining a profitable loan to a customer who could not afford it. One savings bank branch manager put it plainly: "We would rather lose the loan than lose the family." A commercial lender, asked about the same kind of decision, said a declined loan was a lost relationship that a competitor would gladly take. Both answers describe care for the customer, expressed through opposite actions.

Culture Types

Cameron and Quinn (2011) placed cultures on two dimensions, flexibility against control and internal against external focus, producing four types: clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy. The legacy commercial bank is a market culture, externally focused and driven by results. The savings bank is a clan culture, internally focused on loyalty, tenure and family-like relationships. Both share some hierarchy, as all regulated banks must.

Hartnell et al. (2011) pooled studies of the framework and found clan cultures most closely tied to how employees felt about their work, and market cultures more closely tied to financial and operating numbers. The finding cautions against assuming one culture is simply better. The merged bank needs the market culture's growth and the clan culture's commitment, and the savings bank's long-tenured staff are evidence that its culture did something well.

Global Culture

Both banks serve a largely American customer base, but the national context still matters. Hofstede (2001) placed the United States high on individualism, which helps explain why the market culture's individual production awards feel natural to many of our bankers. The savings bank's culture, by contrast, rewarded the branch team, a collective pattern unusual in American banking. Neither is wrong; they are different answers to the question of who earns credit. The module's readings on global culture add a caution: national scores describe averages, and organizations can build cultures that differ from their national setting, as the savings bank did.

Leaders as Culture Makers

Schein and Schein (2019) argue that leaders plant culture mostly through what they notice and track, how they behave in a crisis, who gets rewards and status, and whom they bring in, advance or dismiss. Formal statements matter less than these primary mechanisms. By these criteria, the president is embedding the market culture: she measures commercial volume, rewards loan production and promoted high producers. Each is reasonable on its own, but together they tell acquired staff that their assumptions about trust and caution do not count.

A Shared Assumption

Under the differences lies a shared assumption: both cultures believe the bank exists for its local customers and that customer loyalty is earned over time. The commercial bank shows it through long relationships with business owners; the savings bank shows it through families who have banked there for three generations. Schein and Schein (2019) advise building change on the strengths of existing culture rather than trying to replace it, and this shared assumption is the strength to build on.

Recommendations

These changes do not reject the market culture; they widen what the bank measures and rewards so that both sets of assumptions find a home. The president's vision of a corridor business bank can stand, provided the bank also honors trust and caution in its measures. Progress can be read in the same artifacts the analysis began with: whether branch boards show retention beside production, and whether service pins appear on commercial bankers' desks.

Limitations

Culture is hard to measure, and this analysis rests on interviews and observation rather than a validated survey. The interviews also came from managers, whose view may differ from tellers' and loan processors'. A culture survey using the competing values instrument would test whether the two-culture picture holds across all levels. The analysis is also a snapshot; cultures shift as staff turn over, and the gap may narrow or widen within a year.

Conclusion

The merged bank has one name and two cultures, a market culture built on volume and a clan culture built on trust. Research suggests each brings something the bank needs. By building on their shared assumption of customer loyalty and changing what it measures and rewards, the bank's leaders can grow one culture from two.

References

Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., & Kinicki, A. (2011). Organizational culture and organizational effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework's theoretical suppositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 677-694. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021987

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Sage.

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2019). The corporate culture survival guide (3rd ed.). Wiley.