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The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the Dutch cooperative Rabobank to understand how the structure of an organisation determines how individual employees validate norms within that organisation.

Data over an approximately 10-year period starting 25 years ago are analysed, and the value of relating a historical analysis and narrative approach to ethical and institutional theories in economics and management science is demonstrated.

Regulation in the banking sector appears to have a strong normative aspect. The choice between state and private ownership is based on ideology. The author argues that the private ownership model was based primarily on an ideology surrounding economic efficiency, but that in fact there are other logics that also promote economic development. This contributes to the understanding of the interaction between sector standards, organisational structures and the values of organisations and individual employees. The structure of an organisation enables key employees to deviate slightly from the organisation’s prevailing norms in response to pressures from the wider environment, and those individuals thereby become symbols of that organisation.

The perspective on management history put forward in this paper enables assessing the distinction between normative notions in institutional environments and the organisation as a whole as represented in its governance structure and narratives that key employees disseminate about the organisation. This in turn helps us to understand the interaction between sector standards, organisational characteristics and values represented by individual employees. The author reveals the strong normative impact of banking regulation in line with an older ideological model focused on economic efficiency rather than market logics and the interests of society.

In this case study the authors outline how a major financial institution in the Netherlands deals with the practical aspects of implementing a Basel II‐compliant economic capital framework. The paper gives an overview of the programme Rabobank has set on track for the implementation and discusses the prioritisation of project streams and how to track progress of the programme. An important aspect of the whole programme is communication between all the parties involved. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the major challenges faced during the implementation process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics involved in the emergence and change of management accounting routines. It seeks to provide an understanding of the ways in which these complex routines foster stability and change in management accounting practices.

A longitudinal case study was conducted at the Rabobank Groningen – an autonomous member of the cooperative Rabobank group – over a period of four years. The emergence of a new routine of planning and control was traced, which evolved substantially over the period of study.

It was found that the cognitive representations of the routine studied, i.e. the way it was subjectively understood, provided a temporarily stable basis for the routine. Change arose from improvisations through its recurrent performances. It was also found that change could result from complex dynamics in the routine, as opposed to viewing them as static and stable entities that react to “external” stimuli.

The research findings contribute to an understanding of the reproduction of management accounting routines and the ways in which change can arise in these routines. It provides a means to study the micro‐processes of reproduction of routines, which play an important part in institutional theories of management accounting change.

This paper places management accounting routines and their processes of reproduction at the centre of the argument to provide an understanding of the role of routines in accounting change. Since the notion of management accounting routines has not been developed extensively, this understanding contributes to studies into the nature of routines and their role in management accounting change.

Developing leadership skills through a performance management program was key to achieving a cultural shift at Rabobank international, explains Stephan Janssens, head of HR Europe, who coordinated the global initiative.

Most research into the relationship between social capital and cooperatives takes social capital as the independent variable and the cooperative as the dependent variable, but as yet the authors know little about causality in the other direction. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the cooperative structure helps to maintain organizational social capital.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 46 participants from local banks (chairpersons, directors, managers, team leaders and human resources managers).

Although the cooperative structure formally remained in place, integration into financial markets and digitalization effectively disembedded the organization from its original social context. The cooperative model can only remain distinctive, in terms of how it relates to its clients, under certain institutional conditions.

The findings suggest that scaling, in response to changes in the institutional environment, was an important factor in changing the nature of the organization.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the social dynamics of cooperatives in the field of financial services.

To highlight ways of improving staff attitudes to ethnic‐minority clients.

The briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds his own impartial comment and tries to place the article in context.

Gillert and Chuzischvili's article shows that employee beliefs play a more important part than specific intercultural “competencies” in helping staff to deal with ethnic‐minority clients more effectively. Change will be successfully achieved only if it is part of a larger process that causes employees to see that beliefs are not linked to any moralistic notion of having to be fair or non‐discriminatory, but to the very identity of a good professional in the organization. In this context, “on the job” training is more important than classroom instruction.

The article suggests key ways in which diversity training can be made more effective.

Suggest hybrid e‐commerce strategies can take many forms – ranging from approaches with limited interaction between the physical and virtual entities – to where these two modes are inseparable. Investigates theoretical strengths of synergy models, presenting a series of case studies that illustrate that some companies and industries have hybrid strategies. Sums up that contrary to the former e‐commerce rhetoric, distance is not dead and geography still bears an influence on e‐commerce retail activity.

This article is based on the experience of a pilot training on “dealing effectively with diversity” for branch office bank personnel in The Netherlands. We conclude that being successful in serving ethnic minority clients is a matter of beliefs, playing a more decisive role than specific “intercultural” competencies. The experience of Rabobank shows that learning to deal with diverse clients, then, will only be effective if it is part of a larger change process, and if training is just one of several interventions: impressions and lessons learned from work in progress.

This paper aims to investigate ways in which inertia obstructs the adoption of new management accounting rules. Drawing on the view of management accounting as organisational rules and routines, it aims to suggest various ways in which inertia can become more pronounced when new accounting rules challenge existing routines.

A longitudinal case study was conducted at one of the largest banks in The Netherlands. This bank introduced a program called “Results Oriented Management”, which produced various new management accounting rules.

The paper identifies various ways in which inertia manifested itself when new management accounting rules were introduced. Moreover, the paper shows that ambiguity and contradictions play an important role in the presence of inertia.

The identification of individual‐level habits and scripts is a difficult undertaking. Through a focus on the performative and ostensive aspects of routines, some of the processes of inertia and change on an individual level are identified. This is a relevant method for students of management accounting change.

Although it is well known that routines can produce inertia, the process by which this inertia is manifested and how this affects the adoption of new management accounting rules is still unclear. The paper aims to contribute to this understanding.

How do large well-established firms renew themselves in an increasing turbulent environment? Is there a generic pattern of change or is each change journey rather idiosyncratic? We posed five questions about the nature of renewal patterns. First, how do firms combine external versus internal initiatives in a trajectory of strategic renewal? Second, how does the balance of competence building and competence leveraging evolve in a trajectory of strategic renewal? Third, what are the sequences of action in a strategic renewal process? Fourth, do firms differ regarding speed of their renewal processes? Finally, do different strategic renewal trajectories give rise to different or similar outcomes? Using a simple framework and new metrics we described and analyzed the strategic renewal journeys of the five largest financial service firms in the Netherlands during the period 1990–1997. We found equifinality in viable trajectories of strategic renewal. In four out of five firms, they result in similar outcomes due to mimetic behavior. Nonetheless, one firm showed deviant strategic behavior.