Filene Report Explores How CU Culture Impacts Results

MADISON, Wis. — Filene Research Institute has produced its inaugural report on organizational culture and entrepreneurship.

Designing Credit Union Culture for High Performance describes key components of organizational culture and details opportunities for credit unions to foster high-performance culture using the case of a Swedish bank, Svenska Handelsbanken, whose business model focuses on holistic, branch-centric service delivery, Filene said in a news release Wednesday.

“In the absence of policy, culture is what guides decision making,” Dennis Campbell, a Filene fellow and professor at Harvard Business School who authored the report, said in the release. “Name the metric and culture has influenced it.”

Why, then, do so many CUs fail to proactively align culture with strategy and its subsequent execution?

Campbell will explore this question at a Filene colloquium, Structures for Success, at Harvard University on June 14. Credit union leaders representing Verve Credit Union of Oshkosh, Wis., and Saskatchewan, Canada-based Conexus Credit Union will also present new approaches to member value and growth.

“As cooperatives, credit unions big and small have a competitive advantage in establishing cultures that prioritize member well-being,” Ben Rogers, managing director of research for Filene, said. “This is one of the hallmarks of credit unions and it differentiates them from banks, their for-profit counterparts.”

The research and report is a first for Filene’s Center of Excellence for Organizational Entrepreneurship, which explores cooperative strategies for sustained competitive advantage and business model evolution.