Abstract
Title: The Relationship between Leadership and Organizational Culture
Level: Master Degree in Business Administration
Authors: Al Hareere, Rafeh and Bekic, Kenan
Supervisor: Maria Fregidou- Malama
Examiner: Ehsanul Huda Chowdhury
Date: 2018-10-10
Aim: The aim of the study is to explore the relationship between leadership and organizational culture in a financial organization. The study has been conducted in Handelsbanken, Sweden.
Method: The study is based on ten qualitative interviews with managers and employees in Handelsbanken, Mid-Sweden offices. We used inductive approach by comparing findings with existing theory.
Result & Conclusions: Leadership depends mostly on corporate values and individuals´ personalities within SHB. We noticed predominantly notion of transformational leadership, consisting of democratic, empowering and participative leadership. SHB´s corporate culture is strong and cohesive, resembling mostly guided missile type of culture. We argue that leadership and corporate culture affect each other, in case of Swedish Handelsbanken through employee motivation and empowerment and internal recruitment and development of future managers.
Suggestions for future research: We suggest a study where the possible existence of transactional and laissez faire leadership could be proven within a financial organization as well as studies on other types of corporate culture and conducting similar studies within financial organizations to make comparisons between the organizations.
Contribution of the thesis: This study contributes to theoretical knowledge development about leadership and corporate culture and the interconnection between them within a financial organization, as presented in case of Handelsbanken, Mid-Sweden offices.
Key words: Leadership, corporate culture, transformational leadership; democratic, empowering, participative leadership; guided missile corporate culture, financial organization