Objetivos específicos

Painstaking accuracy implies patience in the execution of the task, and the quality of patience turns out to be a recurring theme in these conversations. Patience ‘is the virtue of waiting attentively without complaint’ (MacIntyre, 2007. p.202) for some good purpose. In old banking, patience was learned as part of one’s apprenticeship, and it was a vital attribute in permitting the development of practical wisdom:

‘I was forty before I got my first managerial type appointment. And even at that I was probably inexperienced, looking back. What I mean is

experience grows through experience if you know what I mean; you gain that through practical day-to-day operations and learning from people who are more senior than yourself’ (C3: 66).

There is an explicit acknowledgement here that practical wisdom is built on experience (C3: 55) and, in the case of banking, prolonged experience. There was a stability built into old banking, which permitted its practitioners to develop the patience required:

a job for life; which was one of the other things that got thrown out in the nineties’ (C1:

10). Patience was valued in the leaders of old banking (C1: 8, C2: 27), and criticisms of bad leadership from the perspective of old banking are very often criticisms of a lack of apprenticeship because leaders lacking an adequate duration of apprenticeship in banking lacked the experience required to develop practical wisdom (C1: 6, C2: 33, C3: 56 and 64, C4: 87-88).

Patience was important as a character trait of leaders in a number of ways. The development of the necessary understanding of banking was not something which could be rushed; it was something you had to ‘grow up’ with (C6: 117, C4: 78-79), patience was therefore a prerequisite of leadership development. Once in a leadership position, patience in dealing with people, particularly subordinates, was valued as a virtue in its own right (C2: 27). Patience was vital in the exercise of due diligence (Section 5.11). Finally, it was important as an aspect of self-control in the development of the organisation. New banking is described by traditional bankers as obsessed not just with growth but with the pace of growth (C3: 50, C8: 156); the problem is both greed and impatience. For traditional bankers, the corresponding vice of impatience is a character defect and appears as such in an immediate and personal way: ‘He was actually quite, on the face of it, quite a charming guy, but quite vindictive, quite nasty with people. He was, you couldn’t describe him as anything other than, brilliant at what he was doing, but he would have no time for - no time in an impatient sort of way - for anybody’s failings, shall we say’ (C2: 32).

Patience is not a virtue in new banking. Certainly, adherents of old banking criticise leaders in new banking for their lack of patience as illustrated above, but more importantly, there are no tales in new banking of the value of patience. There are, by contrast, criticism of bankers or banks as slow-moving or sleepy (C6: 111, C10: 190-191), and frequent positive stories of the extent or speed of change (C8: 165, C9: 168, 173-4, C10: 186, 188-189, 203).

Patience was linked to all of the cardinal Aristotelian virtues in the context of old banking. It was linked to justice, because the obligation of the banker towards the customer was not particularly to do anything with money, it was to preserve it, to keep it safe, and this was a long-term project. In this respect, patience was also linked to courage and self-control, because an appropriate view of risk, given this idea of justice in banking, required a long time horizon. The pursuit of growth, particularly short term growth, was a corollary of recklessness and greed. Lastly, patience was directly linked to practical wisdom in two respects; it was a feature of the exercise of practical wisdom in old banking, and it was a prerequisite for its development.

5:12 The virtue of constancy

The meaning of constancy as used here is linked to the Aristotelian idea of integrity in the sense of wholeness of character (rather than in the common language sense of integrity as honesty). Integrity is that virtue which sets limits to one’s adaptability to social roles, and constancy is that which sets limits to flexibility of character (Maletta, 2011). Constancy as a virtue is particularly linked to resistance as an activity (Beadle, 2013). Without constancy, a person is unable either to detect where resistance might be necessary or to find the strength necessary to offer that resistance.

Resistance

In all but one of these research conversations, there are many tales of constancy because there are tales of resistance against a background of conflict. Constancy has a particular flavour in the conversations, and is associated with an identifiable kind of feeling, which we might term moral discomfort (C6: 110, C7: passim, C8: 155). One speaker (P7) gives a full portrait of this in his account of his own career. He had

attained a level of seniority which was unusual for someone as young as he was at that time. He enjoyed the role, which allowed him to form stable relationships with his business customers, and the role should have been a stepping stone to further promotion. However, whilst in the role he became uncomfortable with the new sales culture which was being introduced and which he saw as transforming long standing relationships of service provision and mutual benefit into ones characterised by sales targets and exploitation of the customer. The theme of discomfort recurs regularly and explicitly in his narrative (C7: 129, 130, 136, 137 and 139), and at one point he

describes in personal terms his decision to quit his role as a result of increasing pressure to pursue sales targets rather than customer service. He voices this as a dialogue with his customers in which he tells them of his discomfort and his obligations to them in giving reasons for resigning. (The story is given more fully above at Section 4.3.)

Sources of constancy

The basis on which he came to this judgement is clear, and it was not only a question of how he was trained to do banking, but how his whole life, including his family life, fitted together: ‘these things are instilled in you from the way you’re brought up and who you engage with throughout your life’ (C7: 137). The cost to his career of resigning from his managerial role at the time in terms of seniority and pay was significant: ‘I took a pay cut and I - what’s the opposite of promotion? The word

escapes me at the moment - I took a drop down in levels as a result of that, to get out of the role’ (C7: 139).

Even if they are not always as dramatic as in this case, several other participants have their own stories of constancy and resistance, which involve moving jobs or losing seniority or pay (C2: 26, C3: 49 C6: 110) or refusing certain actions despite institutional pressure (C3: 59). Such stories of the resistance of old banking to new banking are told in terms of resistance to sales culture or to the pursuit of foolish objectives in the interests of short term gain. A clear set of standards was in operation in old banking which provided limits to behaviour, and an awareness of those limits depended on one’s training in banking and on one’s upbringing in family and community (C7: 139).

There are stories of constancy in new banking and they can also result in acts of resistance involving moving roles within an organisation. One speaker in new banking clearly understands the idea of setting limits to flexibility of character and puts it very precisely with regard to standards of behaviour among colleagues: ‘I’m not going to change to be the way that you want me to be’ (C9: 173).

However, new banking also champions an entirely different quality of flexibility or adaptability which pulls in the opposite direction from constancy. It involves a

readiness to embrace change (Section 5.4), which can include flexibility with regard to basic values, and this can cause confusion. One participant complains that whilst she is happy to be adaptable to new philosophies being brought in by new chief executives, it can be wearing after a while:

‘If you go into the bathrooms there’s stickers on the wall. There’s something on my desktop this morning which again is new […] And it’s actually been done really well. No, it’s good. And I don’t actually feel negative about it at all. I just kind of, over the years, it’s that kind of… you want it to stick at a leadership level, not just because of the top person that’s in’ (C9:177)

Constancy, then, is perhaps not something which was peculiar to old banking, but is something which comes to the fore in these conversations because of the backdrop of conflict between cultures.

The link to cardinal virtues

In what ways does constancy relate to the cardinal Aristotelian virtues in the context of old banking? There is an obvious link to courage. In all these stories of constancy, acts of resistance required personal courage because they involved the individual in an unequal power struggle against the organisation, against an ascendant culture or against powerful others. Quite often the person resisting lost out materially, at least in

the short term. This then gives a quite different perspective on courage from the prudential view given above at Section 5.9. The difference is that the risk being taken here in the context of constancy is to one’s own financial and material goods rather than one’s customer’s savings. What remains consistent between these two different manifestations of courage is that both are driven by a concern for the welfare of the customer, and both still concern the judging of risk.

Links to the other cardinal virtues also seem clear, as least in old banking. Constancy is only possible if one also possesses the virtue of justice; when P7 explains why he took the actions he did, he explains it straightforwardly in terms of justice – what was owed to his family and what was owed to his customers. This sense of justice is founded on a relationship of trust, often expressed as trustworthiness, and so it becomes clear that the relationship between justice and constancy also works the other way round. Justice is only possible if one also possesses the virtue of constancy, because on those occasions when the limits of justice are reached, constancy is

required to remain true to one’s obligations. Self-control is a pre-requisite of constancy, because in order to resist pressure applied, for instance through the threat of dismissal or demotion, one cannot be too attached to the rewards of pay, status or comfortable working conditions. Lastly, as with all the virtues, practical wisdom is required to know when and how constancy should be pursued. This is clear in all of these conversations – all of them weigh carefully their situation before taking action – and, in the case of P7, the affective nature of the operation of practical wisdom is clear; he acted as he did because he felt an acute sense of discomfort, not only because he worked out that he had an obligation to resist.

The rewards of constancy

In these stories, resistance comes at a price, sometimes a very significant one. But constancy also has rewards. P1, for instance, eventually achieved a return to old banking by moving from a senior position in a large diversified international bank, to run a small local savings bank. In doing so he sacrificed some of the status and pay associated with the larger organisation, but was able to return to the standards of his practice. On the question of sales culture and target driven incentive schemes, he responds: ‘…we do not have a sales culture here at all. There’s not one individual whose performance is judged on the basis of what they’ve sold during the year, never mind the past week’ (C2: 36). This speaker appears to have achieved a rare peace of mind with regard to the internal standards of his own practice, but has only been able to do so by rejecting life in the mainstream banking sector.

Acts of resistance were often prompted by dissatisfaction with a target driven sales culture or other efforts to grow sales or reduce costs, but resistance was also prompted by other perceived moral issues, such as fair recruitment procedures (C7: 140). In the case of at least four members of the group, there was evidence of a long term pattern of resistance. This is not conveyed as a pattern of obstruction to change, and one of the bankers in question has a national reputation as an innovator of banking services;

it is rather a pattern of observation of the limits of justice and adherence to those limits.

There is a suggestion in these cases that some people go on to be serial resistors (C3:

63). Having once discovered that they can successfully resist the pressures of the organisation, they develop a habit of tenacity (C7: 140) which allows them to continue to challenge others when they see the limits to their own moral flexibility being

approached.

5:13 Summary: tradition, practice and virtue

Ten conversations were held with leaders in Scottish banking; each conversation contains many stories, and amounts to one overall story in its own right. One

challenge for the researcher has been to make sense not only of the overall narrative of each conversation and its various sub-narratives, but to fashion a meta-narrative of the group as a whole. This has been attempted now in two ways, chronologically and thematically in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively.

The broad themes which have been used to interpret these narratives in the current chapter have been those of tradition, practice and virtue. To what extent has it helped to consider these themes and in this order?

To regard Scottish banking as a tradition serves to highlight some significant aspects of the narratives of these Scottish banking leaders, particularly from the perspective of moral enquiry. It allows us to ground their accounts of their own rationality in a distinct social structure, and it helps to show how that social structure embodied a

correspondingly distinct mode of practical reasoning, which has been characterised here primarily in terms of ‘old banking’. It also gives a framework within which we can begin to understand the conflicts in banking in Scotland as moral and social conflicts, rather than only in terms of market forces or economics.

What we find in the case of old banking as recalled in memory is a picture which is strongly in agreement with MacIntyre’s characterisation of the idea of a tradition. Old banking, that is banking as it was experienced in the 1960s and 1970s and as it persisted to some degree through the 1980s, is shown in these narratives as a

coherent social structure which carried with it a basis for practical rationality. It was not a social structure complete in itself, but was dependent in turn on the structures of local communities in which banking occupies a physical place. Old banking was embodied in a way in which new banking is not; it depended on physical meetings of people, known for their roles in physical communities, rather than on mobile phones, ATMs and the internet. It was intimately connected with other social structures, particularly the Presbyterian Kirk and, when it comes to questions of moral standards, there is more talk in these conversations of the Kirk than of any financial regulator. The fabric of practical rationality on which Scottish banking depended for its own coherence was given physical form in the Chartered Banker Institute, and this was in old banking a specifically Scottish institution supporting a specifically Scottish tradition (C1: 2).

Once the historical narrative of banking in Scotland is given, the practice or practices which are in view can be understood in context. It becomes clear, for instance, that new banking, if it is a practice, is a very different kind of activity from old banking, and it becomes clear that old banking, which has many of the hallmarks of a practice, is now, if not extinct, at least marginalised in the contemporary finance sector. Viewing old banking as a practice, we are in a better position to understand the complex

relationships between the profession of banking and the institutions amongst which it has moved. We are able to trace the history of the decline of that practice in the context of its tradition, complete with the structural changes which accompanied and to a large extent caused its decline.

Once old banking is viewed as a practice in the context of a tradition, then in turn the way that the virtues operate becomes clearer. It is possible to detect the characteristic pattern of virtues in old banking, and to trace changes in that pattern in response to circumstances and particularly in response to conflict; we can also better delineate and describe those virtues by contrasting old banking with new banking, which appears not to require some of them and which appears to value other qualities which are less recognisable as virtues in an Aristotelian sense.

On the basis of these narratives, we should then be in a position to explore the significance of the findings for moral enquiry. They give us a means not only of

illuminating the moral lives of bankers on the basis of virtue ethics, but also of critiquing aspects of virtue ethics on the evidence of practice. This is the work of the next

chapter.