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In Search of Explanations for Bank Performance — Some Finnish DataHelsinki School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki School of Economics and SKOPBANK, Helsinki, Finland In this paper, our purpose is to discover the processes which generate bank performance. The study was carried out in two phases among banks of the SKOPBANK Group in Finland. The first phase is based on cross-sectional data consisting of a sample of 79 banks at the beginning of the 1980s. In this phase we have identified three different performance groups and found specific features characterizing them. The second phase is based on sixteen case banks representing these three performance groups. The data there comprise the documented development of the studied banks, and the interview data on the work histories of their managers. Our aim is to broaden and understand the findings based on the analysis of the cross-sectional data, and to develop more dynamic explanations for the variations in bank performance. The major finding of the statistical part of the study is that despite significant differences, there is no combination of environmental and organizational variables leading directly to superior or inferior performance. Based on the case analysis it was concluded, instead, that the performance of the banks studied is highly 'path-dependent'. The four distinct performance paths outlined turned out to have their own particular cycle of events, which was responsible for the observable performance variations and differences. Thus this study suggests that explanations of bank performance are more dynamic and context dependent than most of the previous studies indicate.
Organization Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3,
425-450 (1991) This article has been cited by other articles:
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