Business Ethics: A European Review
Integrity, responsibility and
affinity: three aspects of ethics
in banking1
C.J. Cowton
Introduction
I have been asked to speak on the subject of
‘Ethics in Finance’. Some wits or cynics might
suggest that the period of fifteen minutes I have
been allocated is about fourteen minutes too long.
In current popular thinking, financial markets
(especially the stock market) are ‘the market’ par
excellence, an arena concerned solely with the
pursuit of financial gain – or so it seems.
However, before I attempt to expatiate on ethics
in finance, it is worth remembering the context in
which we meet. This conference is part of a political
process aimed at identifying and remedying per-
ceived deficiencies in the financing of SMEs (small
and medium-sized enterprises) within the Euro-
pean Union. Politics is not purely about economics,
narrowly conceived, and there is an ethical edge or
underlying social concern to this conference. The
problem in question is that in Europe SMEs do
not receive the funding they should, and that this
has adverse social and economic consequences.
In any case, finance should not be, and cannot
be, the ‘ethics-free’ zone it is so often supposed
to be. Although some ethical analysts might find
the financial field wanting in many respects, there
are important, well-established ethical features of
finance in practice to acknowledge and some in-
teresting recent developments to highlight. Without
attempting comprehensive coverage in the short
time available, I will place a number of ideas and
examples before you to give an indication of some
of the major themes and issues.2 In particular,
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
following some introductory comments on finance,
which will help to establish my focus for today,
I will organise my thoughts using three words, each
of which I think is capable of being rendered into
appropriate French by the translators; integrity,
responsibility, and affinity.
Fundamental finance
I don’t expect to teach an audience such as this the
fundamentals of finance, but two comments at this
point are appropriate to prepare the ground for
what is to follow.
First, one of the central features of modern
capitalism is the way in which much finance is
freed from ties of family, clan, tribe and even
nation. Financial markets and institutions are at
the heart of mature capitalism, pumping finance
around the economic system in a relentless search
for a good return – subject, of course, to an
appropriate level of risk. Finance is, in major
respects, fundamental to the way we organise our
affairs.
Second, the development of financial markets
and institutions means that the field of finance is a
very broad one, containing many different strands.
Continued innovation in financial instruments
and financing mechanisms adds to its complexity
year by year. Nevertheless, it is still useful to make
a basic distinction between debt and equity,
notwithstanding the existence of hybrid forms of
financing. So far today, we have rightly heard a
393
 Volume 11 Number 4
great deal about equity finance provided by
business angels and venture capitalists, but for the
purposes of this presentation I wish to focus on
debt, in particular loan finance provided by banks
and similar institutions, though what I have to say
can be applied to some degree to the provision of
equity finance too.
With these two thoughts in mind, I now turn to
the central issue of ethics.
Banking on integrity
As a development of their custodial role as
guardians of other people’s money, bankers have
become the major intermediary in most economies
between those with surplus funds and those who,
at least for a time, face a shortage – perhaps
because they need money to expand their business.
Banks stand between savers and borrowers, acting
as both bridge and shield. For the depositor the
financial intermediation provided by the bank
yields benefits such as liquidity, diversification of
risk, and expertise in making lending decisions. It
breaks the direct relationship between them and
a specific borrower. The pooling of deposits also
means that many comparatively small savings can
be used to make significant loans to industry. This
process of mobilising funds brings great material
benefits, but it is something that does not depend
solely upon simple commercial factors. It involves
ethics too.
Deposits are needed for the whole process to get
started, and given the exposure or vulnerability of
those who deposit their money at the bank, the
most obvious door through which ethics enters
banking is trust. Depositors are reliant upon not
only the technical competence of the bank but also
its ethical integrity, the difference between the two
being largely a matter of intentions (Provis 2001)
on the part of bankers.
Professional bankers are well aware of the
importance of integrity for generating trust. ‘Since
its earliest beginnings banking has been perceived
as a business which depends on mutual trust and
personal integrity’ (Lynch 1991:3). Although
personal integrity is an issue, for the depositor
the personal qualities of their contact person (if
394
October 2002
any) at the bank are not sufficient. When you lend
money to a relative or friend, you are trusting a
person, whereas when you deposit it at a bank,
you are trusting an institution. Such a shift in trust
from persons to institutions is part of the con-
dition of modernity (Giddens 1990). However,
although the institution or system needs to be
trustworthy, that does not mean that the personal
qualities of individual bankers are irrelevant.
This dual aspect of banking ethics – systemic and
personal/professional – is reflected in a remark in
an address at the 1997 President’s Dinner of the
Chartered Institute of Bankers by Andrew Buxton,
then both President of the Institute and Chairman
of Barclays Bank: ‘Most of us would like to say
that banking is implicitly ethical, and that bankers
act with the highest standards of integrity’
(Buxton 1997:1). In this context it is instructive
to note the everyday use of the phrase ‘bank on’
to mean to rely upon. However, Buxton goes on to
indicate that banks cannot take the trust of the
public for granted. And Lynch (1991:3) cautions
that ‘today’s bankers need to adapt the ethical
traditions of the past to the new demands of the
future’.
One of the ways in which banks have responded
to the challenges is in making more explicit the
behaviour that might be expected of them, for
example through the Code of Banking Practice in
the UK. While self-regulation has a role to play,
so also does external regulation in the modern
financial world. Regulators are important, seeking
to prescribe and proscribe certain behaviours of
banks and providing a degree of protection for
depositors. Sometimes ethics and regulation are
seen to be substitutes for each other, particularly
when regulations are extended to remedy a
perceived lack of ethics, perhaps in the context
of some scandal. However, the relationship
between professional ethics and self-regulation
on the one hand and external regulation on the
other is more complex than this.
Sir Howard Davies, Chairman of the UK
Financial Services Authority (FSA), suggests that,
while practitioners are good at dealing with those
who step out of line with generally accepted
practice, external regulation is better at raising
standards in the market as a whole (Davies 2001).
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
 Business Ethics: A European Review
But writing detailed rules for complicated busi-
nesses where the pace of change is so great and
opportunities for mischief abound is very difficult.
Indeed, encouraging a rule-based approach can
be ultimately self-defeating. Moreover, as Lynch
(1994:5) comments, a relationship between bank
and customer built mainly on legal compliance
‘is of doubtful value’. The FSA, mindful of the
limitations of a highly detailed bureaucratic
framework, is developing an approach sometimes
described as ‘values-led regulation’ (Jackman
2001).
Under the approach being developed by the
FSA ‘firms are required to satisfy a simpler set of
regulations yet also encouraged to become more
ethically accountable’ (Jackman 2001:186). The
regime is based on principles which have a
strongly ethical flavour. For example, a regulated
firm must conduct its business with integrity,
observe proper standards of market conduct, pay
due regard to the interests of customers and treat
them fairly, and pay due regard to their informa-
tion needs and communicate information to them
in a way which is clear, fair and not misleading.
The principles are supported, or partly described,
by a corpus of rules, regulations and guidance. In
this sense the regulatory regime accords with the
advice often given that codes of ethics should be a
mixture of general principles and more specific
guidance.
By placing emphasis on the principles rather
than detailed rules, ‘it does mean that people are
going to have to think in the industry even harder
than before about what they think integrity is’
(Jackman 2001:283). It is thus intended that firms
will work out what integrity means in their
context, rather than merely seek a rule to follow
– perhaps in a situation for which the rule was not
written. Underlying this is a belief that, when
faced with a difficult situation, ‘A firm or indi-
vidual is more likely to jump the ‘‘right’’ way if
they have an understanding [of], and preferably
a belief in, the principles which underlie regula-
tion’ (Jackman 2001:283). In this way regulation
can be a means of developing and supporting an
ethical culture, not just a substitute for it. The
intention is to ensure that ethics is in finance, not
just around it.
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
To summarise, integrity is important in bank-
ing, helping to generate the trust that is vital for a
financial system to flourish. In particular, it is
important that depositors trust banks, otherwise
there is no money to lend. In the following section
I move on to characterise some of the ethical
issues that arise in the context of lending that
money.
Lending with responsibility
Banks need to act with integrity towards people
who deposit money with them. They should also
lend those funds responsibly, in the sense of
managing the risk and return characteristics of the
lending book. In this regard depositors’ interests
are broadly aligned with those of shareholders.
However, banks can be argued to have many
further obligations, including to stakeholders
other than depositors and shareholders. These
wider concerns I will signal by the word ‘responsi-
bility’, which I use here to indicate the possession
of a degree of accountability for the consequences
of one’s actions or inactions. Responsibilities may
change in nature or emphasis over time. Many
faced by banks are faced by other large com-
mercial enterprises too – for example, to be a good
employer, a prompt payer of debts, or a fair com-
petitor (Lucas 1998). However, some are specific
to banks, or are particularly pertinent for them.
For example, in terms of service provision there
has recently been much discussion of issues such
as branch closure and ‘financial exclusion’ suf-
fered by the ‘unbanked’. However, what is of
greater relevance to financing SMEs, as the theme
of this conference, is the set of responsibilities
related to lending.
In making loans, banks traditionally need to
strike an appropriate balance between risk and
return, but in attempting to achieve responsible
lending in the wider sense banks have an even
more difficult balancing act to accomplish. I will
identify and briefly discuss three aspects of this
issue.
First, banks have a responsibility not to exclude
certain groups. In other words, they have a
responsibility to lend fairly. The danger is that
395
 Volume 11 Number 4
banks’ lending policies, where they are unnecess-
arily restrictive, will tend adversely to affect certain
groups which are denied credit or cannot afford
credit on the disadvantageous terms on which it is
offered to them. This might prevent them from
participating in society in various desirable ways
or drive them to ‘loan sharks’ and their ilk.
Excluded or disadvantaged groups might be
defined in various ways, for example by income
level (the poor) or geographical location (perhaps
through ‘red lining’ certain areas). Certain types of
organisation, for example SMEs or start-ups,
might face problems, particularly if they operate
in certain areas or are run by the ‘wrong sort’ of
people.
Second, having lent money, the responsibility of
banks includes not being too hasty to foreclose.
Although calling in a loan can be supported in
ethical terms as preserving depositors funds and
shareholders’ capital, banks’ should not be over-
zealous in seeking to safeguard their position. In
other words, they should withdraw lending with
some consideration for the consequences for other
stakeholders too. The timing and manner of any
withdrawal can be as important to the vitality of
the SME sector as gaining finance in the first
place. In fact, it can be even more important,
because it is not only the firm concerned that is
affected, but also its network of suppliers and
customers, its employees and other business
contacts, so that the economic and social con-
sequences are widespread.
Third, as Morison (1995) argues, lending too
much is potentially as serious a problem in the
ethical sense as lending too little. There is a
connection with the previous point here, of course,
that if too much is lent then foreclosure is much
more likely. Nevertheless, the two are worth
distinguishing, for a bank’s approach to fore-
closure is not necessarily tied to its approach to
lending. Borrowers clearly have a major responsi-
bility in deciding how much to borrow, but so do
banks, both in how they encourage borrowing and
how they exercise their expertise in sanctioning
loans – bearing in mind that if they are taking
security they might be harmed less than others if
things go wrong. And it should be noted that
other stakeholders could be affected by certain
396
October 2002
parties or projects being financed to too great a
degree. For example, banks have in recent years
been called upon to recognise the environmental
impact of their lending (Cowton and Thompson
2000).
The three obligations briefly outlined above are
not absolute duties, but they are general criteria
against which it is sensible for banks to judge their
behaviour. This applies to any area of lending but,
significantly, Morison (1995:66) suggests that
because of differing patterns of competition, ‘the
likelihood of abuse of economic power is . . . much
greater in the area of small firm lending than in
those of personal or corporate lending’. More
generally he asserts that ‘bankers in competition
tend to subscribe to the commercial orthodoxies
of the day with inadequate regard to the ultimate
consequences of their individual actions’ (Morison
1995:57). However, should we expect banks to be
concerned with the ‘ultimate consequences’ of
their actions? Banks’ self-interest is a powerful
incentive, but that does not mean they always
serve it well.
According to Howard Davies of the FSA, ‘an
ethical, responsible culture should be a win-win
for financial services firms’ (Davies 2001:284).
While it is relatively easy to see why ‘integrity
pays’ for banks, is this also the case for the
acknowledgment of wider responsibilities? The
banker, Andrew Buxton, quoted earlier, suggests
that it is.
We have to pay attention to the impact of our
policies and activities on all interested parties –
looking beyond shareholders to the broader group
of stakeholders who are affected in some significant
way by actions from within the company. Today we
can no longer expect to enjoy public trust by right –
it now has to be continuously earned. (Buxton
1997:4)
Integrity might convince depositors of a bank’s
trustworthiness, but Buxton is referring to a wider
form of trust. It is more the ‘licence to operate’
that many businesses are currently talking about.
Of course, banks also require an official, formal
licence to operate from the regulator, who can
come under pressure from politicians and the
public if banks are subject to criticism. In such a
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
 Business Ethics: A European Review
scenario, banks’ taking on a fuller view of their
responsibilities, perhaps viewing themselves as
‘corporate citizens’, can be a way of avoiding
regulatory interference, which most bankers
would generally see as being a desirable outcome.
Another way in which taking on responsibilities
can be a win-win situation is, as experience in
other industries shows, in protecting or building a
reputation or brand. Probably the best-known
example of an avowedly ‘responsible’ lending
policy in the UK is that of the Co-operative
Bank. Launched in 1992, its Ethical Policy
capitalised on the Bank’s historic roots in the co-
operative movement. The Policy, which continues
to be refined in response to customer opinion and
changing circumstances sets out whom the Bank
will and will not do business with. For example, it
will not supply financial services to any organisa-
tion or regime which oppresses the human spirit,
takes away the rights of individuals or manufac-
tures any instrument of torture. Nor will it provide
financial services to tobacco product manufac-
turers. More positively, it will encourage and seek
to do business with companies that avoid repeated
damage to the environment and support the general
ethical stance of the Bank. More recently the Bank
has included its Ethical Policy alongside its Mission
Statement and Ecological Mission Statement in its
Partnership Approach, and each year it publishes
its Partnership Report which outlines its progress.
The approach is thought to have been a major
factor in the Bank’s success in recent years (Cowton
and Thompson 1999, Davis and Worthington 1993,
Harvey 1995, Kitson 1996, Thompson 1999).
Different banks will make different judgments
on the extent of their responsibilities, which to
some extent will reflect their particular circum-
stances. The choices they make will also reflect
their ability to understand and respond appro-
priately to those circumstances. Some observers
might expect that, if a notably ethical behaviour is
commercially beneficial to a bank, the bank would
be pursuing it already. You will probably have
your own views about this. I will not set out my
own position in detail, but I will state that I do not
believe that all businesses are adept at spotting
win-win situations, notwithstanding the apparent
power of commercial incentives.3 The pay-off
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
might not be direct or immediate, but that is not
to say that it is not there. Professional bankers
have already been quoted to the effect that banks
might need to have the value of such actions
pointed out to them. Rather than simply stumbling
across the business case for a particular responsible
action, banks might have to use some imagination.
Indeed, they might have to make the business case,
perhaps working in partnership with other parties
such as national or local government, or not-for-
profit organisations. An indication of the sort of
partnerships which might be possible around the
margins of mainstream banking is provided in the
next section, which mentions several examples of
initiatives where ethics plays a strong role.
Finance through affinity
The Co-operative Bank can be depicted as ‘a
conventional bank with an ethical emphasis’
(Cowton and Thompson 1999:10). To the extent
that the Co-operative Bank has discovered a
market niche founded on its ethical policy, its
customers might be viewed as being like-minded
people, at least to a greater degree than would be
the case for a mainstream bank. Customers who
have been attracted to the Bank because of its
stance on various issues are likely to have certain
attitudes in common. The Bank has built ethical
features into its products, not just into their
delivery. But there are other examples of banks
or related financial initiatives, many of them of
quite recent origin, which seek to go even further
than the Co-operative Bank in expressing through
their product offering a particular set of values or
beliefs. Some of these relate to a particular subset
of the organisation’s activities, such as a ‘bundle’
of lending projects, while others comprise the
complete product range. In most cases of the
latter, the organisation’s raison d’eˆtre, not just its
modus operandi, is to express ethical, religious or
social values in a financial manner.
I refer to these various initiatives as ‘affinity’
finance. I use this term for three reasons. First, in
various fields it stands for relationship by choice,
a mutual attraction or resemblance, and hence
it seems ideally suited to the coming together of
397
 Volume 11 Number 4
like-minded parties around a particular values-
based product offering. Second, it is already
familiar in a financial context, referring to credit
cards which are associated with a particular
organisation. The card is ‘branded’ with the
affinity organisation’s name and logo, and pay-
ments are made to it by the card issuer, usually
based on initial take-up of the card and usage.
Many types of organisation, including profes-
sional bodies and football clubs, are involved, but
amongst the most prominent beneficiaries of these
schemes are charities (Cowton and Gunn 2000,
Schlegelmilch and Woodruffe 1995, Worthington
and Horne 1993). Third, it contains the first three
letters of the word ‘finance’, which would seem to
offer the potential for some creative wordplay at
some time in the future but which for now will
remain (mercifully) unexploited.
Having given a broad indication of what I mean
by affinity finance and some reasons for the choice
of that term, probably the most effective way of
making further progress in the short time remain-
ing is simply to give some examples. These
examples are illustrative, not comprehensive, and
each must of necessity be brief. Since there are
some similarities with what Lynch (1991) calls
‘viewpoint banking’, I will begin with what he
identifies as the prime example – Islamic banking.
According to the Institute of Islamic Banking
and Insurance, Islamic banking strives ‘to build a
society based on social justice, equity, moderation
and balanced relationships’. All activities must
conform to Islamic law (Sharia) and so, for example,
all dealings in gambling, pornography, alcohol
and intoxicants are forbidden (Haram). However,
for conventional western bankers the most striking
feature of Islamic banking is the absence of interest
(Riba), replaced by a notion of sharing profits and
losses or risks. Comprising both independent
financial institutions and subsidiaries of conven-
tional banks, the Islamic financial services sector
is growing fast in both Muslim countries and the
west, providing an opportunity for ordinary
Muslims to ensure that their saving and borrowing
activities do not compromise their faith. For
example, the Manzil Home Purchase Plans, offered
by the Islamic Investment Banking Unit, enable
Muslims in England and Wales to finance property
398
October 2002
purchases in a manner which is lawful (Halal ) for
them.
Another set of developments results from the
wish to express environmental concerns, which
might spring from a wide range of beliefs and
values, in terms of finance. For example, in the
field of housing finance there is the Yorkshire-
based Ecology Building Society (Cowton and
Thompson 1999: Ch. 6). Triodos Bank, which is
one of the most interesting examples of affinity
finance, not least because it is actually a bank, also
has a strong environmental emphasis. Like the
Co-operative Bank, which has its Ecological
Mission Statement, Triodos has an overarching
policy to finance projects ‘which benefit the
community, enhance the environment and respect
human freedom’. This policy determines the types
of project which the Bank will and will not
finance, but Triodos pushes affinity much further.
First, because it is relatively small, it is able to
provide more detailed information to its deposi-
tors about where money has been lent, thus
providing an unusually high level of transparency.
Second, within the envelope of its standard social
and environmental lending criteria, Triodos give
depositors opportunities to specify more precisely
the uses to which they wish their funds to be put,
either through the flexible Social Target Account
or partnership accounts dedicated to a particular
sector or cause. Examples of areas of application
include organic farming and social housing. Thus
Triodos Bank seeks to restore a sense of relation-
ship between depositor and borrower which, as
explained earlier, tends to be broken in normal
banking practice. (For further details see Cowton
and Thompson 1999: Ch. 12, Cowton and
Thompson 2001.) This is ‘relationship banking’,
not in the current sense of an aspiration to make
the interaction between banker and customer
more than a series of transactions, but between
depositor and borrower. Moreover, although the
Bank’s policy is to offer relatively attractive rates
of interest, in many cases depositors elect to
receive a lower rate of interest than the official rate
on the account, in some cases waiving it altogether,
thereby helping the borrower by permitting funds
to be lent on at favourable rates of interest
(‘interest offset’). Triodos markets its products
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
 Business Ethics: A European Review
by emphasising that account holders stand to
make a twin return – competitive interest rates (if
they wish) and a social return.
This kind of depositor behaviour is seen in
several other affinity initiatives, which might seem
to be as much about philanthropy as banking or
conventional saving. For example, Investors in
Society (Cowton and Thompson 1999: Ch. 4) and
Shared Interest (Cowton and Thompson 1999:
Ch. 9, Moore 1993) seek to channel finance to
worthwhile causes in the UK and Third World
respectively by attracting deposits on which they
pay zero or very low rates of interest. Of particular
relevance to this conference are the examples of
financial initiatives targeted at European SMEs –
not just SMEs in general, but SMEs in particular
areas. An example from the UK is the Aston
Reinvestment Trust (ART), a local social invest-
ment fund which aims to promote economic and
social regeneration in Birmingham by lending to
small businesses and voluntary sector organisa-
tions which cannot access finance from elsewhere.
Formally launched in June 1997, it is modelled on
the US community development loan funds. ART
raises capital from socially concerned investors
and then channels this money into loans at
commercial rates to specific groups which experi-
ence difficulties in securing mainstream financing,
such as self-employed people, small businesses,
community businesses, charities and inner city
housing associations. It also acts as a financial
broker, helping to package loans using finance
from other sources and, on occasions, acts as loan
guarantor for social businesses and charities. The
way in which it brings together social investors,
banks, other business and the public sector is
particularly interesting.
Schemes which emphasise social rather than
financial return pose little threat to conventional
banking because, even though they are growing
significantly and are making a useful contribution,
in terms of total finance they are miniscule. But
are they of any relevance to mainstream bankers?
I would argue that they are. First, they provide
opportunities for collaboration which, as argued
earlier, might enable mainstream banks to extend
their conception of lending responsibility. There
is, after all, a risk that at least some parties would
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
interpret the need to take such initiatives as a
criticism of the mainstream banking sector.
Indeed, some have been established as an attempt
to remedy perceived deficiencies of conventional
bank lending. Second, the initiatives can be
regarded as experiments or sources of ideas for
schemes which could be adopted by mainstream
banks. They might reflect a social need, but there
are also economic benefits, not only in the direct
sense of providing an opportunity for an enter-
prise to become established and, hopefully,
flourish, when it might then appear on banks’
radar screens; but also through the discovery of
talent and the development of confidence in
certain neighbourhoods and thus helping those
neighbourhoods to become more stable environ-
ments in which business and banking can prosper.
Conclusion
In offering some thoughts on the ethics of finance,
focused on banking, I have used three words
which I hope are easy to translate into French4
(certainly all have Latin/French roots); integrity,
responsibility and affinity. Even if the words do
not convey exactly the same meaning when
translated – indeed, they each have different
shades of meaning within English – I hope they
represent useful categories for taking forward our
thoughts on this under-considered field. For what
is more important than the precise definition of
particular terms is the kind of behaviour that they
point towards, and the helpfulness of those labels
in mapping the territory.
As I have described them here, integrity is
important to generate the trust necessary for any
banking system to flourish; responsibility high-
lights contemporary banks’ need to take into
account the consequences of their lending policies;
and affinity refers to a way in which depositors
and borrowers can be brought closer together
than they are in conventional western banking.
My analysis has been necessarily broad, in keeping
with the title I was given, the limited time
allocated to address it, and the immaturity of
financial ethics as a field of study (Boatright
1999). However, I hope that what I have said goes
399
 Volume 11 Number 4
some way towards making sense of the territory of
ethics in banking and provides some helpful
signposts for the way ahead.
Notes
1. This paper is based on an invited presentation on
‘Ethics in Finance’ to a conference entitled ‘Financ-
ing SMEs: The European Approach’, held on 24–25
October 2001 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Thanks
for the invitation to address the conference, made
through the European Business Ethics Network
(EBEN), are expressed to M. Serge Kubla in his
capacity as President of the European Council of
Ministers of Industry. For the purpose of publi-
cation the text has been edited and references to
appropriate literature have been added.
2. Several of the examples are described in greater
detail in Cowton and Thompson (1999).
3. Nor am I saying that ethics always pays; or that
commercial pay-off is the only outcome that
matters.
4. Simultaneous translation between English and
French was provided at the conference.
References
Boatright, J.R. 1999. Ethics in Finance. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Buxton, A. 1997. ‘Business ethics: getting on the right
track’. CIB News, February, 1–4.
Cowton, C.J. and Gunn, C.J. 2000. ‘The affinity credit
card as a fundraising tool for charities’. International
Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Market-
ing, 5:1, 11–18.
Cowton, C.J. and Thompson, P. 1999. Ethical Banking:
Progress and Prospects. London: Financial Times
Business.
Cowton, C.J. and Thompson, P. 2000. ‘Do codes make
a difference? The case of bank lending and the
environment’. Journal of Business Ethics, 24:2, 165–
178.
Cowton, C.J. and Thompson, P. 2001. ‘Financing the
social economy: a case study of Triodos Bank’.
International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary
Sector Marketing, 6:2, 145–155.
400
October 2002
Davies, H. 2001. ‘Ethics in regulation’. Business Ethics:
A European Review, 10:4, 280–287.
Davis, P. and Worthington, S. 1993. ‘Cooperative
values: change and continuity in capital accumu-
lation: the case of the British Cooperative Bank’.
Journal of Business Ethics, 12:11, 849–859.
Giddens, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity.
Cambridge: Polity.
Harvey, B. 1995. ‘Ethical banking: the case of the
Co-operative Bank’. Journal of Business Ethics,
14:12, 1005–1013.
Jackman, D. 2001. ‘Values-led regulation’. In Moon,
C. and Bonny, C. (Eds.), Business Ethics: Facing Up
to the Issues: 186–194. London: Economist Books.
Kitson, A. 1996. ‘Taking the pulse: ethics and the
British Cooperative Bank’. Journal of Business
Ethics, 15:9, 1021–1031.
Lucas, J.R. 1998. ‘The responsibilities of a business-
man’. In Cowton, C. and Crisp, R. (Eds.), Business
Ethics: Perspectives on the Practice of Theory: 59–77.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lynch, J.J. 1991. Ethical Banking: Surviving in an Age
of Default. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Lynch, J.J. 1994. Banking and Finance: Managing the
Moral Dimension. Cambridge: Gresham.
Moore, G. 1993. ‘Banking on concern: Shared Interest
Society Ltd and ethical investment in the Third
World’. In Good Business: Case Studies in Corporate
Social Responsibility: 64–78. Bristol: Centre for
Social Management, School of Advanced Urban
Studies.
Morison, I. 1995. ‘Moral conflicts in commercial
banking’. In Frowen, S. and McHugh, F.P. (Eds.),
Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility:
57–72. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Provis, C. 2001. ‘Why is trust important?’. Reason in
Practice, 1:2, 31–41.
Schlegelmilch, B.B. and Woodruffe, H. 1995. ‘A
comparative analysis of the affinity card market in
the USA and the UK’. International Journal of Bank
Marketing, 13:5, 12–23.
Thompson, P. 1999. ‘The future of commercial bank-
ing – the internet, stakeholders and ethics: a case
study of the Co-operative Bank’. Journal of Financial
Services Marketing, 3:4, 316–333.
Worthington, S. and Horne, S. 1993. ‘Charity affinity
credit cards – marketing synergy for both card
issuers and charities’. International Journal of Bank
Marketing, 9:3, 301–313.
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002