The Role of Banking Strategies in Building the Core Competencies of Banks
An Exploratory Comparative Study Between Government and Private Banks

A Thesis Presented To

The Council Of Administration and Economics College

in Karbala’a University

As a Part Of Requirements To Obtain Master Degree In The

Financial and Banking Sciences

Presented By

Mohammed Faiz Hassan Mahdy Al-Zauba’ay
And the supervision By

Prof. Dr Alaa Farhan Talib

Abstract This study aims to study the banking strategies and its role in building the core competencies for banks (a comparative study in a sample of government and Private banks) the state of instability in the banking environment of Iraq in particular, and the total environment in general resulting from the uncertainty and difficulty of predicting the future and circumstances make it necessary to come to the banks to protect themselves in an environment of legislation and high competitiveness through the adoption of the strategic approach in its dealings through drawing appropriate strategies to achieve its objectives. The banks dependent on today to stay in the environment that are dynamic and competitive on her own resources and capabilities to enable them to continue to work and maintaining their competitive status and superiority over its competitors by harnessing their existing resources and capabilities in optimum image in order to build their core competencies and advantage competitive to the rest of its competitors and thus stay in the area of work and competition and that it can be through the adoption of the bank of strategies that can strengthen and build those core competencies. Despite the importance of banking strategies and adopt some of the banks have to build and strengthen its core competencies, we find today that many banks are still not aware about importance of the role of banking in the strategies to build the core competencies and this is a problem that the focus of the study and is working on appropriate solutions as much as possible and this study seeks to achieve a set of goals and most important of which: 1 – see how the adoption of the sample researched banks study of the banking strategies and how to employ them to build their core competencies and strengthen it. 2 – determine the correlation between banking strategies and dimensions of the core competencies in the researched banks. 3 – Determine the impact of the relationship between banking strategy and the dimensions of the core competencies in the researched banks. In order to achieve these goals, the study adopted a blueprint presumably reflects the logical relationships between the variables of the study and in order to detect when the nature of this relationship has been put forward several hypotheses as answers to preliminary and this study seeks to verify their validity and in this context was introduced three assumptions ,it was as follows: 1 – do not vary the sample banks in the adoption of the study variables. 2 – There is no statistically significant correlation relationship between banking strategies and core competencies. 3 – There is no statistical significance impact relationship between banking strategies and core competencies. And in order to implement this study in the field and test her assumptions and as a comparative study has been selected Government banks (Rafedain and Rasheed Bank) and private banks (Bank of Baghdad , National Bank , Gulf Bank , the Bank of Credit and Investment Bank) for being the banks, leading, with a history in the banking Iraqi and contains the departments a good fit for the study and are eligible to answer the questionnaire and cooperated with the researcher in the distribution of the questionnaire as a basic tool for the study and had reached the sample (71) of managers and heads of departments and people in the public administration and has used statistical program ( SPSS V17) and (Microsoft Excel 2010) for the purpose of statistical treatments and had findings of this study to several conclusions: 1 – Government banks do not vary in the adoption of banking strategies and core competencies. 2 – private banks do not vary in adoption banking strategies and core competencies. 3 – there is a statistically significant relationship and influence between the variables of the study in the government and the private banks. Finally the study included several recommendations, including: 1 – The necessity of departments of banks researched banking strategies that have been studied ((diversification strategy (universal banking) , a strategy of merger and strategic alliances)) because these strategies, have large the impact on banks are researched. 2 – Working on the development of managerial expertise in the departments of banks across the top entry in the sessions of the regional and global banks with a long tradition in the adoption of the strategic approach in its work in order to see their experiences and update their processes and work experience. 3 – the Drawn strategies must be mesh with the resources and capabilities in the banks so because of that the bank must not to put strategy invest less than what his have and never use all what it has or put strategy over his abilities and cannot implement it .