Backscratching in banks: political cycles in bank manager appointments

Close ties between politicians and businesses affect firms’ performance and political outcomes, and while direct political control over firms has been curtailed by tightened regulation, political connections remain ubiquitous in many countries. Yet, it is unclear through which channels these linkages are maintained in strictly regulated environments. I speculate that one such channel of political control over firms is politicians’ ability to influence corporate appointment decisions. To test the claim, I employ survival models that analyze chairpersons’ turnovers in 90 Spanish savings banks between 1985 and 2010 and find strong evidence for electoral appointment cycles: bank chairpersons are more likely to lose office shortly after regional elections and when new governments enter office.

Factors Influencing Customers’ Brand Loyalty in Ethiopian Banking Industry

The study is carried out on the factors influencing customers’ brand loyalty. The study is aimed at evaluating customers’ brand loyalty status and identifying its determinants. To this end, an explanatory research design is used with the support of descriptive and multiple regression analytical techniques. From the customers of the bank 290 of them are selected using a purposive sampling technique. Questionnaires are administered to collect the primary data. The finding of the study indicates that the loyalty status of the customers is fragmented into hard-core loyalty, split loyalty, shift loyalty, and switching loyalty status with the inclination on the first and second categories of loyalty status. It also reflects that distribution, promotion, reputation, satisfaction and tangible benefits are the predictors of customers’ brand loyalty. A message of sticking on these determinants of loyalty is transmitted to the bank manager with the emphasis on the most predictors, i.e., distribution and promotion.

Prospects for use of coaching in Ukrainian banks

Each bank manager should understand that the use of modern personnel management technologies is essential to motivate employees to work efficiently. Coaching is one of the ways to influence employees, it focuses on the formation of employee behavior in such a way as to maximize the independence and effectiveness of the decisions taken. To date, this kind of personnel management is becoming more relevant and significant. The purpose of the study is to determine the methods of coaching and its algorithm in personnel management, the possibility of borrowing the foreign companies experience, as well as its effective use as an innovative approach to personnel management. Scientific findings of leading scholars in personnel management, especially coaching, make the theoretical basis of the research. The research uses the methods of analysis, synthesis and comparison. The article describes the category of “coaching”, defines its main characteristics, functions and tasks, examines the use of coaching in the Coaching Policy on the Central Bank of Ireland, analyzes the current implementation of coaching in Ukrainian banks and rationalizes the relevance and prospects for using coaching by Ukrainian banks.

Burns and the Bank Manager: Robert Burns in the Shadow of the Debtors’ Prison

The debate about the personal ‘frailties’ of Robert Burns started at his death and continues today. It is common ground that the poet was never a wealthy man, but was financial management one of those personal failings? When he wrote anxious begging letters on his death bed was he in real danger of the debtors’ prison, or were they the depressed thoughts of a dying man? By using the credit analytics of banking on a volume of legal papers found in the National Records of Scotland concerning Burns's estate, it is now possible for the first time to give a definitive answer to this controversy to determine if he died in debt, leaving his family unprovided and facing potential destitution.