Banks' vision statements: peculiarities and missing links

This study aims to cross-examine the vision statements of banks by comparing Islamic banks (IBs) and Conventional banks (CBs) in the Middle East. The top 100 IBs and top 100 CBs were selected for this study based on their rankings. The vision statements for each bank were collected from official websites. The datasets were accessible through a Mendeley data repository. Data were analyzed using content and descriptive statistics. This exploratory research provides many significant findings for academia and professional bankers involved in strategy formulation. First, this study provides a comparative account of vision statements for both types of banks. IBs and CBs did not have significant differences in their descriptive statistics, especially vocabulary density, frequently used keywords, frequently used characteristics, and average number of words in each vision statement, except for a few. Most banks (approximately 80% including both IBs and CBs) have a range of 1-30 words for each vision statement. Six out of ten keywords are common in both IBs and CBs, i.e., ‘Bank’, ‘Financial’, ‘Services’, ‘Islamic’, ‘Choice’, and ‘Leading’. The keyword ‘uniqueness’ was the least frequently used characteristic (36%). Analyses of major themes in data reflect that both groups share the common themes of ‘bank’ and ‘financial’ in their vision statements. On the other hand, distinctive elements in the keywords include ‘Customer’ in CBs and ‘Islam’ in IBs. Secondly, a few of the current study's findings are new to the literature. For example, previous studies have suggested that visions are futuristic, but the current study could not find meaningful ‘futuristic’ vision statements in banks (both IBs and CBs). Finally, this study provides recommendations for academia and senior bankers. Both IBs and CBs are suggested to make risk enablement part of their visions, and both must include technology or, more specifically, financial technology (FinTech) or at least technology enablement in their visions. They must be able to impress young customers through technology enablement and utilization. IBs need to work on their vision statements and create a sense of differentiation from CBs in the region. More vision-only studies are required to explore the ‘anatomy’ of vision statements in different countries, cultures, and, more importantly, in different types of banks. Developing essential components of vision statements in the modern world is a good research agenda. A more detailed and robust framework is required to analyze vision statements more efficiently.