Will 'bank' ever be synonomous with 'trust'?

Rather than individuals taking responsibility for the decisions in which they're involved, we see an increasing reliance on "company policy", "codes of practice", "management expectations" as the rationale (some might say rationalisation) for the behaviour of those individuals and the behaviour of the companies they constitute. Einstein said, "You can't change the environment with the same level of thinking that created it". Instead we need a rejuvenation of corporate culture that emphasises personal responsibility as the basis of principled behaviour. If the lowest standard leaders exhibit is the highest standard they can expect from the led, then this change must come from all the executives of the companies they lead, underpinned by their concern for the interests of all the stakeholders in the business.

Can business schools make a contribution? After all, many of the investment vehicles and decision processes are informed by the research of academics employed by those schools, apparently with no concern for how they may be used in the market-place. They are then presented to business students, more often than not without the benefit of a check against some kind of moral compass giving direction as to the ethics of their use.

Business schools can't teach people to be ethical, any more than they can teach people not to be lazy, greedy, envious and so on. What they can do, though, is to hold up a mirror and show people how to behave in a principled and personally responsible way, rather than relying on the excuse they were "just following directions".

The banks can recover trust in the post-GFC period, but only if they begin to make decisions in a way that is determined to reconcile the interests of all their stakeholders and the wider community in which they are embedded.