Swimming against the tide: ethical banks as countermovement

Abstract

This paper adds to the literature on bank ethics, social movements and stakeholder engagement by presenting ethical banks (EBs) as a countermovement to the process of financialisation. Following the 2008 financial crisis, ethical banks have expanded markedly. Some suggest that this growth is opportunist in nature and reasoned in the public's disenfranchment with commercial banks. However, this paper seeks to demonstrate how British EBs have been, and remain, connected to social movements and civil society organisations (CSOs). It employs a mixed-method approach to review EB coverage in media and to explore three UK-based EBs' connections with CSOs via Social Network Analysis, with the aim to compare them to, and contrast them from, building societies, credit unions and other alternative banks. The link between EBs and CSOs were further examined in interviews with EBs. Findings support the idea of EBs in the UK as countermovement by highlighting how connections with CSOs constrain EBs behaviour, but at the same time give EBs privileged access to niche markets.

Keywords:

• ethics
• non-governmental organizations
• social movements
• stakeholder management

Notes

1. Includes: theTimes.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk, guardian.co.uk and FT.com.

2. An egocentric network is a network focused on ego and its perception of relationship with alters.

3. Ego network density divides the total number of actual ties present by the number of possible ties. It depicts connectedness and cohesion within local structures.

4. Freeman Betweenness is a measure of a node's centrality in a network based on the geodesic connection through the node. See Freeman, L. C. (1977). A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweenness. Sociometry 40 (1), 35–41.

5. E–I index is a measure of the group embedding based on comparing the number of ties within groups and between groups. The E–I (external–internal) index takes the number of ties of group members to outsiders, subtracts the number of ties to other group members and divides by the total number of ties. The resulting index ranges from −1 (all ties are internal to the group) to +1 (all ties are external to the group).

6. Brokerage scores examine the roles played by an actor who lies on a direct path between two actors.

7. Because Ecology Building Society is more similar to other ethical banks, it has been entered as an ethical bank.

8. (liaising between 1 = NeNmBs and 4 = CSO is represented by the value in the corresponding cell).

9. The ‘out of …’ score refers to the total score for ‘Liaison’ (Liaison scores are bordered).

10. Includes: Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds & RBS; FSA & BoE; BBA and BSA & ABCUL.