BANKING PROFESSION AND THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: RHETORICAL STRATEGIES OF INSTITUTIONAL WORK

Banking activities today are global in nature and impact industry and governments across the world, as witnessed during the banking industry meltdown during the global financial crisis. We investigate the banking profession during the financial crisis by focusing on the rhetoric of chief executives of major banks and relevant stakeholders. Our analysis reveals that institutional maintenance of the banking profession was dominant, whereas institutional change remained difficult due to the limited scale and nature of the rhetoric employed towards it. We also find that while the bankers and various internal and external stakeholders engaged in institutional maintenance, change was mostly focused upon by external stakeholders. Our findings thus highlight the challenges in institutional change related to professions, particularly due to the strong role of the professionals themselves in institutional maintenance and their avoidance of institutional change. While we focus on the United States banking industry, given its primacy in global finance, our findings have implications for the banking profession across the globe. We interpret these findings to provide insights on institutional work related to professions and draw broader theoretical implications for the literature.