Workers’ motivation: the italian case of cooperative credit banks

The role of the cooperative credit banks in the European financial system is growing, particularly during the current period of financial crisis. Nevertheless, these cooperative banks have not received a great deal of attention from scholars. This lack of attention has resulted from two factors: i) the lack of empirical data and ii) the fact that the organizational structures and multiple goals of these cooperative banks are “generally more difficult to understand than the corporate governance of the commercial banks with their more easily interpretable and single goal of profit maximizing”(Groeneveld, 2011). This paper contributes to the understanding of Italian cooperative credit banks (Bccs) and their activity by describing their main characteristics and by providing a comparison with different cooperative bank models. Second, it analyzes the job satisfaction of Italian Bccs’ employees, which is a crucial factor because human resources, along with the Bccs’ unique structural elements, facilitate long-term relationships with the local communities where Bccs are located.