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This chapter is concerned with access to bank finance by ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) in the U.K., focusing particularly on the process of decision-making by bank managers with respect to credit applications by entrepreneurs from ethnic minority groups. The results reported in this chapter are taken from a major U.K. study that included two large scale surveys of EMB owners and a white control group, case studies with ethnic minority entrepreneurs and a programme of interviews with business support agencies. Whilst referring to other evidence, this chapter focuses on the findings from a series of interviews with bank representatives. The U.K. study was funded by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), the Bank of England and the Small Business Service and supported by the Commission for Racial Equality.

Although African markets have incorporated various selling practices originating from the West, there are still some selling practices that are indigenous to the African people and are widely practised by sellers across the continent. This chapter is an attempt at documenting those indigenous practices with the aim of providing managers, educators and policymakers of the continent with a reference document on what these indigenous selling practices are, how sellers invoke them in the course of transactions and the cultural values that guide these practices. Primary data were gathered from three countries representing western, eastern and southern Africa through observations, field surveys and in-depth and key informant interviews while literature was sourced for secondary data. The chapter identified street selling, haggling and credit-based selling as the major indigenous selling practices found among sellers in Africa. The cultural values that guide selling in the continent include respect, trustworthiness and kindness. The chapter displayed a framework to explain the subject matter and made some practical suggestions that are relevant for managers, educators and policymakers.

This chapter reports on the “CEO’s-eye-view” of the 1990 financial crisis at Citibank using unique data from CEO John Reed’s private archives. This qualitative analysis sheds light on questions that have perennially plagued executives and intrigued scholars: How do organizations change routines in order to overcome inertia in the face of radical change in the environment? And, specifically, what is the role of the CEO in this process? Inertial behavior in such circumstances has been attributed to ingrained routines that are based on cognitive and motivational truces. Routines are performed because organizational participants find them to cohere to a particular cognitive frame about what should be done (the cognitive dimension) and to resolve conflicts about what gets rewarded or sanctioned (the motivational dimension). The notion of a “truce” explains how routines are “routinely” activated. Routines are inertial because the dissolution of the truce would be inconsistent with frames held by organizational participants and fraught with the risk of unleashing unmanageable conflict among interests in the organization. Thus, the challenge for the CEO in making intended change is both to break the existing truce and to remake a new one. In this study, I uncover how the existing organizational truce led to the crisis at Citibank, why Reed’s initial attempts to respond failed, and how he ultimately found ways to break out of the old truce and establish new routines that helped the bank survive. These findings offer insight into the cognitive and motivational microfoundations of macro theories about organizational response to radical change.

This chapter differentiates the effect of solicited credit ratings (SCRs) and unsolicited credit ratings (UCRs) on bank leverage decision before and after the credit rating change. We find that banks with UCRs issue less debt relative to equity when the credit rating changes are approaching. Such findings are also prominent when bank credit rating moves from investment grade to speculative grade. After credit rating upgrades (downgrades), banks with unsolicited (solicited) credit ratings are inclined to issue more (less) debt relative to equity than those with solicited (unsolicited) credit ratings. We conclude that SCR and UCR changes lead to significantly different effects on bank leverage decision.

This study conducts a logistic regression analysis of the ability of excess cash and short-term bank loans to substitute for each other and a multiple regression analysis of the factors influencing excess cash and short-term bank loans holdings. In addition, a questionnaire is used to survey the views of Taiwan’s corporate financial leaders on the factors influencing these two liquidity resources. The empirical results support a certain level of substitution between the two types of holdings. The regression analysis shows that for companies that would accumulate more excess cash when interest rates are low, have strong corporate performance, have low debt ratios, and whose chairman of the board and chief executive officer (CEO) are not the same person. Companies tend to have more short-term bank loans when corporate performance is poor, debt ratios are high, and the chairman of the board and CEO are the same person, as well as when the degree of the deviation of control is small. We find that factors on financial structure, operating performance, cost of capital and corporate governance have significant influence on the holdings of these two liquidity facilities in regression, whereas the influence factors exclude corporate governance in questionnaire.

This chapter presents results of a qualitative study among European champions in social media management. It aims to describe a strategic process and its implications for social media strategic management.

The chapter is based on four in-depth case studies involving both primary and secondary data analysis and interviews.

Social media management is governed by similar principles as corporate communication management. However, there is an important role of personal preferences of senior executives for an effectiveness of the strategic process.

The model allows describing the social media management in the multinational companies. Organizational learning process drawn in this chapter can be directly applied in the multinational companies from various industries.

Social media create an environment in which established actors need to learn how to communicate socially. Sophistication of the tools requires sophistication of the strategies and processes.

This chapter analyzes companies from various industries which are considered successful in social media strategic management. It creates a model which is applicable in various industries. It provides also insights into social media strategies from the research among social media global leaders.

Microfinance, despite its mixed results in economic literature, continues to proliferate in many developing countries. This research project investigates the relationship between collectivism and microfinance. It analyzes the question: how does a collectivist culture and its norms influence the ways in which borrowers spend loaned funds and interact with microfinance institutions (MFIs)? The authors generate a theoretical model for how norms of informal redistribution affect borrowing decisions and use a robust dataset of all of the loans facilitated by Kiva, a global MFI, to compare microloan borrowing in countries with different cultures of collectivism. A case study of Senegal, a culturally collectivist country, includes surveys and detailed interviews of individuals and MFIs. The authors find that the strong social networks associated with collectivism are well adapted to the structures of many MFIs. However, the authors also uncover that some of the collectivist social norms, such as norms of informal redistribution, can deter individuals from using microfinance.

Contrary to what its title might suggest, this chapter does not develop an alternative vision of finance. On the basis of the financial world as it currently operates, we propose to identify the paradoxes and the likely evolution of a banking and financial system evolving. Based on the facts, this chapter seeks to extend the discussions initiated in the last chapter, entitled “Socially responsible banks?” of our book “The management of the bank,” published by Vuibert editions. The frantic pace of innovation and the requirements of regulators encourage banks to review their organization and their governance. This chapter attempts to position the bank between two paradoxes: on one side, the crises have not made more responsible banks. The facts remain: rates and currency manipulation, embezzlement rules on bonuses, even if some are still under financial assistance of the United States. On the other hand, the “finance otherwise” innovates, disturbs, and upsets. Creative players such as collaborative funding or virtual currencies are not really threatening to the big banks. But in the past, marked by their personnel costs and infrastructure cannot meet the agility of these new entrants “crowdfunding,” and other online payment methods have backed the Web. These innovations really threaten banks that do not lack the resources to adapt. And if tomorrow, the banks no longer existed? Behavior changes and already a growing number of clients save, borrow, and lend the use of means of payment to settle their online purchases without using the services of traditional financial institutions! A certainty, “finance otherwise,” will play a stimulatory role. The speed and magnitude of change is such that it becomes necessary for banks and financial institutions to adapt to these new technologies to increase or simply maintain their business. Based on the facts, the chapter explores and analyzes the developments that may become sustainable for a banking system reluctant to lose the monopoly of the distribution of credit and means of payment. The “end of the banks,” is a “provocative” subject but insufficiently addressed in the economic literature.