Macro-Cultures

Patrick McConnell

The previous chapter described the prevailing model of international banking – the small world of universal banking – and discussed the concepts of universal cultures. Some well-established models/ frameworks of organisational culture were assessed. This chapter will now introduce the concept of “macro-culture” to describe the culture in segments of the universal banking industry, and will also develop a new model of universal banking macro-cultures and look at some of the shared assumptions prevalent in these cultures.

MACRO-CULTURE

Much of the discussion concerning banking cultures following the global financial crisis (GFC) has taken place at the level of individual firms, and only latterly has debate focused more at an inter-bank or industry level. In their analysis of the UK retail banking industry, Spicer et al (2014) build on the concept of macro-culture identified by Schein in the 1980s, and describe the rise of what they call a sales macro-culture:

Following the financial crisis, many of the inquiries into the failure of particular banks and the wider banking system have identified a long list of causes. However, one persistent theme that many of the people we