GoodWork Paper 62: Excellence, Engagement and Ethics in Banking: An Attempt to Make Sense of the Financial Crises of 2008

Author(s): Nicholas Fair

Editor(s): Howard Gardner, Series Editor

Media: Paper

Description: Through conversations with 10 current and former bankers, we seek to understand some of the causes of the financial crises of 2008. We observe four striking changes in the banking sectors of the United States and the United Kingdom over the past thirty years: some banks have grown to be very large; shares of some banks are now publicly traded; most banks now compete with each other vigorously; and the day-to-day working procedures of all banks have been transformed by information technology. We argue that, while some of these changes may have made banking faster and cheaper for some, their overall effect has been to impair the capacity of banks to undertake socially responsible work. The consequences of this debilitation became starkly apparent at the end of 2008 in one of the most serious financial crises in decades.