Santander Company Culture and Strategic Orientation of Santander Bank

The general thrust in today's banking industry is either toward strategic expansion or eventual merger under the auspices of another bank's strategic expansion. As one of the top-tier performers and holders of capital in the financial industry and as the single largest banking entity in the Eurozone, Banco Santander finds itself in the former strategic category. As the discussion hereafter will show, Santander continues to grow even in spite of the recession that has crippled so many European banks and lending institutions. As the discussion here shows, this strategic orientation continues to define actions and initiatives taken by Santander.

Origins:

The company culture at Santander is sharply defined according to the age, prestige and traditionalism in place at the bank. As one of the older and larger-scaled banks in Europe, and in the world at large, Santander has a highly ingrained pattern of leadership hierarchy, proceduralism and personnel expectation. As its new subsidiary, the North American-based Sovereign Bank reports, "founded in Northern Spain in 1857, Santander has a successful history in retail and commercial banking, and has grown to become one of the five largest banks in the world by profit." (SB, p. 1) With more than 14,000 branches and 35,000 ATMs all over the world, Santander serves 80 million customers in 40 countries, employs more than...

(SB, p. 1)
This enormity has precipitated what many have described as a highly rigid internal culture based on a pointedly centralized mode of leadership. Indeed, even as the international growth which has come to define the banking industry also drives Santander, the Spanish bank maintains strictly central controls over its subsidiaries and operations all over the world. The result is a proclivity within individual branches, regions and countries to limit managerial autonomy in favor of more concentrated decision-making approaches. The text by Rumsey (2011), indicates as much in an article regarding Santander's merger with ABN in Brazil this past year. Here, there is cited a concern that Santander's tendency toward centralized authority may be incompatible with the corporate banking culture in Brazil. Accordingly, Rumsey observes that "Santander's corporate culture is seen as providing less freedom for senior managers in the regions, says the senior head-hunter. ABN's collegiate approach emphasises getting the majority on board before making a decision; Santander has a top-down approach, with Madrid playing a key role in decision-making and granting less autonomy to overseas units." (Rumsey, p. 1)

This denotes that while Santander's corporate culture is largely connected to the bank's early origins and its current enormity, such an orientation may well require considerable reconsideration…