Having established that the Australian banking sector would become the research site for the study of the social construction authentic leadership during the GFC, a first round of data collection began in February 2010 and continued to April 2010. The collection of print media articles was conducted to familiarise myself with media reporting of the sector and the leaders.
The publications of the Australian print media comprise 2 national and 10 state/territory daily newspapers and 11 metropolitan Sunday newspapers. In addition, there are 36 daily regional and rural papers and 180 regular suburban/community papers (Australian Press Council, 2007: 11). The print media industry is highly concentrated, with News Limited, a division of US-based News Corporation, and Fairfax Media controlling all but one major daily metropolitan newspaper (The West Australian). News Limited dominates the market with approximately two-thirds of the daily press following a series of takeovers executed by the company from the late 1980s (Turner, 1996), while Fairfax Media has similarly maintained its size and strength via mergers and acquisitions, including a merger with Rural Press in 2007 that allowed Fairfax to gain control of The Canberra Times as well as a number of smaller regional and rural publications (Tabakoff, 2007). Despite the increased concentration of the print media market, newspaper circulation in Australia has seen a steady decline since the late 1940s, indicative of the increasing mediums such as radio, television, and more recently, Internet-based sources through which news can be accessed (O’Donnell, 2009). However, it is estimated that approximately 69 per cent of the population continue to read the major national and metropolitan newspapers at least once a week (Schulze, 2009: 20).
Figure 3.2 Timeline of the events of the GFC
Source: (Marks, 2009; Mathieson, 2008; Sykes, 2010)
Nov‐07 Dec‐07 Ja n‐08 Feb‐08 Ma r‐08 Apr‐08 Ma y‐08 Jun‐08 Jul ‐08 Aug‐08 Sep‐08
Oct‐08 Nov‐08 Dec‐08 Ja n‐09 Feb‐09 Ma r‐09 Apr‐09 Ma y‐09 Jun‐09 Jul ‐09 Aug‐09
Sep‐09 Oct‐09 Nov‐09 Dec‐09 Ja n‐10 Feb‐10 Ma r‐10 Apr‐10 Ma y‐10 Jun‐10 Jul‐10
February 2009: Pres i dent Oba ma
i s s ues $787 bi l li on s ti mul us pla n whi le Prime Mi ni s ter Rudd i s s ues $42 bi ll i on Aus tra l i a n economy grows 0.4 per cent from la s t qua rter FDIC reports 416 di s tres s ed ba nks (highes t i n 15 yea rs ). ANZ a cqui res RBS As i a a nd ING Bea r Stea rns report firs t ever l os s in his tory. The US enters reces s ion
March 2008: US Federa l Res erve
l ends money to JPMorga n Cha s e to ta ke over Bea r Stea rns
Coll a ps e of Opes Pri me Wes tpa c a cqui res St George Ba nk September 2008: Ta keover of
Merri ll Lynch, ba nkruptcy of Lehma n Brothers , a nd ba il out of AIG, Freddie Ma c a nd Fa nni e Ma e
IMF es tima tes tota l los s es of $4.1 tri l li on for fina ncia l s ervices compa ni es Va l ue of US gua ra ntees a nd ba il outs tota l a pprox. $12 tril l ion
US unemployment ra te hi ghes t in
a t l ea s t 40 yea rs Firs t publi c hea ri ngs of the US Congres s i ona l Fina nci a l Cri s i s
Inquiry Commi s s i on The Fed i mpl ements pa y guidel ines for US fina ncia l firms to reduce incentives for ri s k February 2010: 91% of the AAA
s ubpri me RMBS s ecuri ti es i s s ued i n 2007 a nd 93% i n 2006 ha ve been downgra ded to junk s ta tus
June 2010: Di s a ppea ra nce of
GFC reporti ng i n the Aus tra li a n publ ic pres s
October 2008: Interna tiona l Moneta ry Fund
encoura ges governments to reduce interes t ra tes a nd increa s e s pending. Aus tra l ia n government offers gua ra ntees on ba nk depos i ts of up to A$1 mi l li on.
CBA a cqui res Ba nkWes t
Col l a ps e of Storm Fina ncia l
This study has chosen to focus on 16 major national and state/territory publications. Readership for national and metropolitan publications far outweigh that of regional and suburban newspapers. As of September 2010, circulation of the national and metropolitan publications totalled approximately 16.4 million, compared with 3.5 million for regional (Simons, 2010: 5) and 1.6 million for suburban publications (Australian Press Council, 2007: 16). The differentiation of regional/suburban newspapers towards more local news also means that news relating to the major retail banks and their leaders are most readily covered by the national and state/territory publications. Some media articles are also sourced from Business Review Weekly (BRW), a weekly magazine that often offers more detailed profiles and interviews of the banking leaders. A breakdown of the publications utilised in this study, their formats, and ownership are listed in Table 3.1:
Table 3.1 List of Australian Print Media Publications Sourced for the Study
Publication Title Distribution Format Ownership
The Australian National Broadsheet News Limited
Australian Financial Review National Compact Fairfax Media
The Sydney Morning Herald NSW Broadsheet Fairfax Media
The Sun-Herald NSW Broadsheet Fairfax Media
The Daily Telegraph NSW Tabloid News Limited
Sunday Telegraph NSW Tabloid News Limited
The Age VIC Broadsheet Fairfax Media
The Sunday Age VIC Broadsheet Fairfax Media
The Herald-Sun VIC Tabloid News Limited
The Courier-Mail QLD Tabloid News Limited
The Sunday Mail QLD Tabloid News Limited
The Advertiser SA Tabloid News Limited
The West Australian WA Tabloid Seven West Media
The Mercury TAS Tabloid News Limited
The Canberra Times ACT Broadsheet Fairfax Media
Business Review Weekly National Magazine Fairfax Media
Initially, all the CEOs of Australia’s 7 retail banks were included in the collection, including John Stewart (National Australia Bank), Ralph Norris (Commonwealth Bank of Australia), Michael Smith (Australia and New Zealand Banking Group), Gail Kelly (Westpac Banking Group), Paul Fegan (St George Bank), David Liddy (Bank of Queensland), and Rob Hunt (Bendigo Bank). Verbal
text of media articles from the time of each of their appointments until the time of data collection was sourced from all the major print media publications listed in Table 3.1 by means of the Factiva database. Next, each media article that was available in the University of Sydney’s microfilm database was scanned from its original publication. All articles collected from Factiva were analysed in relation to the verbal text, while those available in the microfilm database were additionally analysed in relation to the visual structures. Articles that were initially excluded in the collection were those published after January 2010, as the microfilm database involved a 3-month delay from publication to inclusion in the database, as well as those published in The Mercury and The West Australian, which were not archived by the database. Conversely, media articles from the Australian Financial Review (AFR) were only available in the form of short excerpts in the Factiva database. Those that were identified from the verbal text search as relevant were scanned via microfilm so that the articles could be read in their entirety. It was then determined if they would be included in the data set. Articles from AFR that appeared in the initial Factiva search and later proved to be only tangential references to the CEO were excluded. At this stage, a total of 783 articles on all 7 CEOs were collected, among which 587 were scanned from their original publications.
Following this, a preliminary analysis was conducted of the data collected to date. The media articles were coded for their references to leadership authenticity and the GFC to confirm the expectation that media representations of the banking leaders provided insights into authentic leadership during the GFC. It was apparent in the way that the GFC was constructed differently for each CEO with diverse bearings on their representations of authenticity that a social constructionist approach to the study would provide deeper insights into existing understandings of authentic leadership. After media reporting of the GFC largely diminished in the Australian print media from June 2010, a second round of verbal and visual data collection was undertaken over 4 months from August 2010 to bring the data set up to date.
When the complete data set on the 7 CEOs was collected, it was observed that the smaller bank CEOs, Paul Fegan, David Liddy, and Rob Hunt, lacked the breadth of media reporting evident among the CEOs of the four major banks. Paul Fegan held his role for just under 12 months after replacing Gail Kelly, who acquired St George Bank as the head of Westpac in February 2009. Only 52 articles were able to be sourced from the time of Fegan’s appointment to his resignation. Liddy, who served at the Bank of Queensland since March 2001, only had 139 articles, which although comparable to the size of Smith and Kelly’s data sets, media articles in relation to him were spread out over a tenure more than four times as long as theirs. Despite having led Bendigo Bank since January 1990 until his retirement in July 2009, the longest tenure of the banking CEOs, only 92 articles were able to be sourced for Hunt. In order to better manage the scope of the study and
allow time for a more in-depth analysis of each of the leaders of the sample, it was decided that the study should be limited to the CEOs of the four major banks. Moreover, the major retail banks dominate the market, with the four of them controlling 77.4 per cent of the market share (worth A$2.4 trillion) as at September 2010, compared to only 9.2 per cent shared between the other domestic banks (Australian Trade Commission, 2011: 9). The sizeable customer base of the four major banks is also evident in their possession of “85 per cent of all banks’ housing loans, 85 per cent of household credit cards, and 82 per cent of total household deposits in Australia” as at December 2008 (Australian Trade Commission, 2009: 1).
A total of 626 articles of the four major bank CEOs identified as containing pertinent information about their leadership were collected and 475 (76%) of these articles were able to be sourced in their original visual form via a microfilm database. The CEOs who form the sample for this study, their banks, time spans of their tenures, and number of collected articles and visual scans are presented in Table 3.2:
Table 3.2 Sample of banking CEOs
Leader Bank Tenure Articles Scans
Ralph Norris Commonwealth Bank of Australia 2005–2011 193 152
John Stewart National Australia Bank 2004–2008 167 150
Michael Smith Australia and New Zealand Banking Group 2007– 130 92
Gail Kelly Westpac Banking Corporation 2008– 136 81
As reflected in the data, the media construction of the CEOs began upon their appointments to the bank, if not earlier. Thus at the onset of the GFC, representations of the CEOs already existed in varying degrees of potency and detail in the media. In order to examine the construction of their leadership authenticity during the GFC, it is necessary to gain an understanding of when and how the CEOs’ leadership construction emerged. As such, the scope of the data set includes media articles collected from the start of each CEOs’ tenures with the bank. This broadened collection of texts enables a more thorough examination of the pre-GFC constructions of leaders, and thus a better understanding of the historical context of their leadership image. The references to all the media articles collected and analysed for this thesis are provided in Appendix A.
While it needs to be acknowledged that the representation of the four major bank CEOs within these newspapers can potentially be influenced by any financial investments their respective organisations have made to the publication, such as in the form of advertising expenditure, this study has chosen to focus on the images of authenticity of each leader constructed through the
culmination of all visual and verbal representations of their leadership, rather than attempt to investigate causal links between financial interest and leadership representation. This is not to deny the possible existence of journalistic bias. This study acknowledges the ubiquitous and intrinsic nature of bias throughout all levels of the production, dissemination, and consumption of texts, however, this study also takes into account that producers of the media are fundamentally concerned with organisational credibility (Chen and Meindl, 1991). It is in the professional interests of media companies to maintain a degree of consistency in their reporting and as such, attributions of leadership cannot be assumed to be so readily divorceable from pre-existing constructions of leadership, even when faced with financial investment. Moreover, having drawn on a range of 16 publications across the three print media companies that control major national and metropolitan news, the approach employed by this study minimises the likelihood of over-representing any particular publication’s constructions of a CEO.