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This paper examines the Competition Commission report on the provision of small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) banking services in the UK. The examination will centre on the perceived clash between the ‘remedies’ proposed by the Competition Commission and the present forms of lending decision making, a key function in business banking. It is concluded that the Competition Commission assessment of the provision of banking services by clearing banks to small firms, directs scant attention as to how banking services are ‘manufactured’ or banks actually make decisions and operate in practice.

Retail payments systems are a key element in the financial infrastructure of any capitalist economy ‐ through them governments can enact economic policy and individuals and companies can conduct their transactions. A recent development for UK retail payments systems has been the recommendations of the ‘Review of Banking Services in the UK’ (the Cruickshank Report). In this report, recommendations are made as to the operation of the primary UK retail payments system (APACS); a new regulatory framework and the removal of ‘barriers to entry’ are proposed to encourage greater competition in the industry. This paper considers these two proposals, which have both received government support for early implementation, in terms of wider policy issues surrounding payments systems, including economic efficiency and safety and security, and the economic incentives which underpin the present retail payments system in the UK. It is concluded that the proposals for regulation of business activities to promote competition may underestimate the importance of payment system safety and security regulation. Equally, the proposed removal or substantial reduction in barriers to entry to individual payments systems may have a range of unforeseen consequences.

The paper considers two central issues; one, how was the definition of the UK banking market undertaken within the Cruickshank Report, and two, how might the assumptions made in defining banking markets have influenced the competition analysis and overall conclusions presented by the report. In this paper, the banking market for personal customers is discussed in relation to theoretical and empirical work and the distribution of banking branches in the UK. An assessment of the form of competition, used in the Cruickshank Report, builds on this discussion and considers the implications of a possible oversight in the definition of the UK banking market. Recommendations and suggestions for further work are provided within the conclusions.

Within the UK, low levels of saving has been a continuing policy concern for both government and financial regulators. Why individuals save less than might be expected has been increasingly associated with an inability of ma… financial services consumers to comprehend product quality and to underta… of firms in this debated through examining the product choices presented to consumers by financial services providers.

We examine two aspects of poor consumer decision making, yet to be fully explored in the wider regulatory literature. Initially, we review how financial services providers consider product innovations and the marketing strategies they pursue in constructing their offerings to consumers. Secondly, we ass… a popular financial product, the interest bearing deposit account, to examine what savings product choices are actually presented to consumers. These areas are explored through semi‐structured interviews undertaken with semi financial services managers and through a review of the entire product offerings to the interest bearing deposit market.

We report that savings markets are characterised by high product turnover and short duration. Consumers in the UK, alike many developed nations, and often unfamiliar with, and lack confidence when, buying savings products. Example consumers often have difficulties when making product comparis… Faced by so much proliferation of undifferentiated products, consumers find difficult to make a straightforward comparison between products.

It is concluded that further public education, a greater understanding of ho… firms present product choices to consumers and how consumers perceive s… choices are areas demanding further research and consideration.

Consideration of how firms make decisions with regard to product innovation and savings problem more generally is an area demanding further investigation from a range of disciplinary approaches. Finally, given the perceived high importance of financial services to individuals and the nation… economy at large, some scrutiny should be placed on the issue of the high profitability of the financial services industry and how this is reflected into product innovations and, therefore, differentiated quality choices presented various categories of consumers.

Within the academic marketing literature the importance of government policy and regulatory judgement receives far less scrutiny than is justified. To illustrate the importance of government regulation broadly and the new UK competition law framework specifically, a single regulatory case is examined: the Competition Commission assessment of the provision of banking services to small and medium‐sized firms. The report aims to promote more “arm's length” or transactional approaches to managing SME bank customers, effectively reducing banks' abilities to build relationships with its SME customers. It is proposed that relationship marketing for banking services to SMEs, a subject of considerable academic attention in recent years, has been severely curtailed in its present form by this recent regulatory judgement. The discussion also provides broader implications for policy analysis and marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the financial risks posed by energy and environmental markets and how these risks are addressed by current regulatory regimes and legislation. This assessment should be of interest to academics, practitioners, regulators and policymakers.

The first half of the paper provides a theoretical conceptualisation of the financial risks energy and environmental markets pose by drawing on established academic literatures on financial regulation and energy markets. The second half of the study provides a legislative analysis of the evolving approach to the financial regulation of energy and environmental markets. Drawing on “grey” literatures, this assessment critically appraises the array of current policy initiatives that have the potential to affect the financial regulation and operation of energy and environmental markets.

The theoretical conceptualisation of financial risks identified macroeconomic and energy systemic as the principal risks posed by energy and environmental markets. The legislative analysis contains various conclusions, prominent amongst which are: that the EU will play an increasingly important role in the financial regulation of energy and environmental markets through bodies such as ACER and ESMA; and that it is essential the boundaries of regulatory responsibility between energy and financial regulators are assessed to ensure activities leading to risk do not fall between the remits of responsibility.

There is a dearth of academic work on the financial regulation of energy and environmental markets, while prior policy and regulatory analyses have focussed on specific markets or products. This belies the interrelationships and, in some cases, the integration of these risks and the nature of financial crises. To amend for this omission we provide a holistic assessment of these legislative and policy developments.

Purpose – Past literature suggests that the performance and turnover of the subordinate are affected by the support, abuse, and feedback provided by the supervisor. In this study, we posit that support, abuse, and feedback in an accounting firm, are in turn, affected by the supervisor's personality, as defined by the Big Five personality factors.

Methodology/approach – We conducted a web-based study with 115 accountants from a top 100 US accounting firm. The accountants completed questionnaires related to the personality of their supervisors along with questionnaires related to the support, abuse, and feedback they received from their supervisors. We analyzed the data using factor analysis and multiple regression.

Findings – We hypothesize that Openness and Agreeableness increase support; Neuroticism increases abuse, but less so if the supervisor is an Extravert; and Extraversion and Conscientiousness increase feedback. Among the hypothesized relationships, all are supported except the relationship between Openness and support. Additional findings are that Extraversion and Conscientiousness increase support; Agreeableness and Conscientiousness decrease abuse; and Agreeableness increases feedback.

Research implications – Our study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the relationship between the personality traits of supervisors and their behavior toward subordinates in an accounting setting. The results of our study can be used in identifying the supervisors who have the right personality for the position, which will likely improve the work environment and reduce turnover.

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to examine the effect of accountability pressure as a monitoring control tool to mitigate subordinates' propensity to create budgetary slack. The results suggest that budgetary slack is (lowest) highest when accountability pressure is (present) absent under a private information situation. The results further reveal that accountability pressure is positively associated with subordinates' perceived levels of honesty, which in turn is negatively associated with budgetary slack creation. The findings of this paper have important theoretical and practical implications for budgetary control systems design.

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.

From an online survey of 114 participating accountants at staff, senior staff, and supervisor levels from a top-100 U.S. accounting firm, we investigate the effects of the Big Five personality traits (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness) on the ethical decision-making process of accountants. Within the framework of Rest’s (1986) Four-Component Model of Ethical Behavior, we focus on Component III, the formation of an intention to act upon one’s best ethical judgment. Based on the limited extant literature on the connection between personality and ethical behavior, we expect that accountants high in Conscientiousness and Openness will tend to form an intention to act ethically despite pressure in an ethical dilemma. We develop more tentative hypotheses about the remaining three factors. Controlling for age, gender, education, sole earning status, and experience, we find clear positive statistical effects of only Conscientiousness and Openness. These findings have implications for the human resource departments of accounting firms, as well as contributing to a basic understanding of the relationships between Big Five personality factors and ethical intention.