Strategy, Organization, and Incentives: Global Corporate Banking at Citibank

This paper studies organizational structure and incentives within a company, Citibank, that has an explicit and evolving global business strategy. The paper focuses on Citibank's corporate banking business, which in the mid-1990's underwent major changes in its strategy that, in turn, were accompanied by two major reorganizations and implementations of a new incentive compensation system. Citibank's corporate banking business in OECD markets moved froma geography-based organization to one that was multi-dimensional, with the customer dimension given first priority, the product dimension given second priority, and the geography dimension significantly de-emphasized. Citibank thus represents an excellent setting for examining the interplay among strategy and organizational structure in a complex, global company.