Move your money? Sustainability Transitions in Regimes and Practices in the UK Retail Banking Sector

We present and test a new conceptual framework for understanding sustainable transitions in co-evolutionary sociotechnical systems. We apply this in the first study of sustainable transitions in UK retail banking. This system has suffered recently from banking crises, and links to environmentally-sensitive industries such as fossil fuels. Sustainability-focused values-based banks are a potential solution, but have had little impact on mainstream banking systems. We aim to understand the constraints on a potential transition and how to overcome them. Our new approach identifies the intersections between transitions in regimes (using the multi-level perspective MLP) and transitions in practices (using social practice theory SPT), two competing conceptual frameworks in the literature. We ask: what are the intersections between transitions in the banking regime and banking practices, and how may critical points of constraint be unlocked to become points of opportunity, thereby aiding a transition to more sustainable banking systems? We present new empirical findings from a mixed-method case study of the UK banking sector and two values-based banks in particular. Interventions for growing sustainable banking are identified and we demonstrate the added-value of the combined approach through indicating strategies for unlocking the transformative potential of sustainable innovations

Structural Power and the Politics of Bank Capital Regulation in the UK

This paper describes and explains a significant tightening in bank capital regulation in the UK since the 2008 financial crisis. The banks fiercely resisted the new capital regulations but in a novel theoretical contribution we argue that the structural power of business was reduced due to the changing ideas of state leaders, by changing institutional arrangements within the state and by wider open politicisation of banking reform

Debunking the myth of shareholder ownership of companies: Some implications for corporate governance and financial reporting

The shareholder primacy model is dominant in Anglo-Saxon corporate governance and financial reporting even though it is considered to be dysfunctional and a source of crisis. The possibilities of reforms are routinely stymied with the claims that shareholders are the owners of large corporations and management should promote their interests. This paper seeks to debunk such claims. It shows that a corporation is a distinct legal person and cannot be owned by its shareholders. It argues that shareholders in contemporary corporations are owners of ?fictitious? capital which is very distinct from ?real? capital. The systemic pressures require the holders of fictitious capital to constantly buy/sell shares in pursuit of short-term gains. The paper further shows that in a globalised economy, the shareholding duration in major UK companies has shrunk and shareholders are more dispersed than ever before. They are not in any position to control or direct corporations for the benefit of other stakeholders and society generally. The paper calls for abandonment of the shareholder model of governance and calls for empowerment of stakeholders with a long-term interest in the wellbeing of corporations

Architecture, symbolic capital and elite mobilizations: The case of the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate campus

In this article, we apply the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu, in particular forms of capital, social fields, field of power and modes of domination, to demonstrate how the study of a symbolically powerful building can provide insights into what are often opaque elite interactions. In order to do this, we focus on the corporate campus headquarters of a powerful financial institution, the Royal Bank of Scotland in the context of Scotland in the period 2000–2009. We pose the following questions: What is the relationship between corporate space and the field of power? What role does a corporate building play in circuits of capital conversion? What does this case tell us about the role of architecture in elite mobilisations? In addressing these questions, we contribute to critical organisation studies by identifying and theorising the role of corporate space in inter-elite dynamics and circuits of capital conversion. This approach, we argue, provides a methodological lever which could be applied to other symbolically important buildings in order to understand the nature and role of inter-field interactions in the conception and realisation of such buildings