Exploring the recruitment practices in the bank Bourdieusian lens

Moeed, Afshan (2021) Exploring the recruitment practices in the bank Bourdieusian lens. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This study has two objectives. Firstly, it explores how INEDs are recruited into the field. Secondly, it explores how the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) affects the recruitment practices and subsequent behaviour of INEDs in the field. These are the topics of interest to the scholars of professional service firms, business elites and policymakers. The context of the research is the bank governance field at board level in the UK. This research adopted a qualitative research design and conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 participants (INEDs), who were very experienced and had been in the banking field for a long time. The interview data are supplemented by extensive publicly available documents, reports and policies. The findings of the study demonstrate that how recruitment as a game is played in the field to make the bank governance field as “ closed and restricted field”. The recruitment of the social actors through a specific combination of cultural capital (social and cultural fit ) may produce and reproduce the interest of the dominant financial actors in the field. Therefore INEDs may struggle to secure and apply their true independence. Likewise, they may face resistance towards the liberal SM&CR policy of individual accountability, which is an attempt by the regulators to empower INEDs, enabling them to participate in bank decision-making independently.. However, the findings of this thesis demonstrate that so far, the SM&CR seems to be ineffective due to the strongly rooted prevailing dominant social structure and culture in the field, as perceived by INEDs. Most of the traditional governance research has focused too narrowly on the structure and composition of boards of directors. However, the results are inconclusive and recent scholars consider this approach simplistic. Moreover, there is limited understanding of how INEDs are recruited, how the recruitment processes may affect their governance behaviour (Hora, 2019; Terjesen et al., 2009) and why the SM&CR seems to be ineffective in changing the board culture and the governance behaviour of INEDs in UK banks. This study addresses these gaps in the literature by deploying the Bourdieu Theory of practice with the triad of concepts of field, habitus and capital.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: INEDs, SM&CR, recruitment, cultural capital, bank governance.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > HG Finance
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Accounting and Finance
• Supervisor's Name: Wu, Dr. Betty, Favotto, Dr. Alvise and Mckernan, Prof. John
• Date of Award: 2021
• Embargo Date: 7 October 2024
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2021-82498
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 11 Oct 2021 09:37
• Last Modified: 11 Oct 2021 09:37
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.82498
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/82498