History
Historically banks have been viewed solely as financial institutions, which should concern themselves with all things financial. Morality has not entered the equation. This public view has allowed banks significant leeway with concern to ethical standards. This is because they have not been associated with the actions taken by the businesses they lend to. Banks have also stated that a reason for not mounting the new challenges that sustainability presents is that such inspection would require interference in the activities of clients.Jeucken 2002 However with changing social demands, and as more is known about the effects that banks can have through their lending policies, banks have begun to feel pressure from the general public, NGOs, governments, and the like to go beyond conventional business management. For example in the mid 1990s the Cooperative Bank asked 6,000 customers what their thoughts were on ethical banking; 84% responded that it was a good idea.Harvey 1995 In fact the cooperative bank was formed in response to the growing consumer base looking for ethically oriented banks.
Read more about this topic: Ethical Banking
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
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“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)