My previously described battle with Santander left me feeling that the bank was taking advantage of its size and trying to bully me as a small business, refusing to accept my case that “charging” 6.65% for a single failed forex transaction was daylight robbery. But even at my most paranoid I would not have dreamed – or dared to suggest – that it was part of a conspiracy. Yet it now seems that this could be the case.
This week, (ironically on the very day I mailed my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Services,) the morning news announced that Governor of the Bank of England was facing a grilling by a parliamentary select committee over reports that banks have been manipulating foreign currency rates.
This is the third malfeasance scandal to hit the banking industry in recent times. It follows banks being fined millions of pounds and repaying billions for mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI).Then there was the Libor scandal where they were found guilty of manipulating bank lending rates. This has apparently cost banks and their insurers globally almost £5 billion in regulatory fines as well as increasing litigation damages. Now we have these new allegations which Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, has reportedly described as being “as serious as Libor, if not more so.”
You cannot help but find it depressing. In an industry where integrity is paramount there no longer seem to be any moral values. It seems that anything goes and this moral turpitude is so endemic you are left wondering where it is all going to end.
Yet it may not all be doom and gloom. My despair was somewhat alleviated by an MIT Sloan article “Leading the Sustainability Insurgency” which describes the “next generation of CSR management” and claims that “this new sustainability revolution aims to alter the way business is done in every function and unit of the company.”
I know the link seems tenuous, and altering the way business is done is hardly a panacea if it continues to operate in a moral vacuum. Yet – for me – the fact the author takes the link between CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and sustainability for granted is encouraging; a light in dark times. For him anyone appointed to the post of Director of Sustainability expects that to mean that they will lead a company’s social and environmental agenda and make their business a force for good.
Thus for him the fact that they find the role very different in practice, and more about avoiding “reputational risk” is the root of revolution. He sees the revolt reshaping the role into this more idealistic expectation. This is where he claims the “insurgency” is taking place and, as a result, attention is switching from an external to an internal focus.
For my part I am encouraged by both his linking CSR and sustainability and his findings. The link between CSR and sustainability perhaps isn’t universally obvious but for me it is clear enough to not need justification. The shift in focus thus appears good too. Sustainability has to include the sustainability of the organisation itself. Paradoxically that demands an external focus. For, while sustainability naturally demands a focus on the organisation and the manner it operates, it also demands keeping a firm fix on the organisational purpose. After all, the organisation exists to meet an external need and it is sustainable only so long as it meets that need in the most economic and socially responsible way. So you need to ensure the pendulum does not swing too far. There must be a balance.
And there is no better way of safeguarding that balance than employee ownership. It is the only way to “alter the way business is done in every function and unit of the company.” Employee ownership ensures the shared vision and common purpose and creates the engagement that also provides the framework to safeguard a more moral way of doing business. People who have a stake in, and care about, an organisation are more likely to look out for its interests and thus protect it from those who might lead it astray. What do you think? Can you see the light?