Search

Article Information


Relationship Banking and Competitive Advantage: Evidence from the U.S. and Germany
Keltner, Brent
37/4  (Summer 1995): 45-72

American banks have spent the past decade shifting away from relationship banking toward product strategies based on high turnover. They have invested heavily in information technology and embraced an unstable, part-time labor force as a means of reducing costs. In the process, they moved away from many of their traditional sources of competitive advantage and encouraged customers in both the retail and wholesale banking segments to turn to other financial providers and other financial instruments to meet their banking needs. Banking institutions in Germany, in contrast, have been able to maintain a stable share of that country's financial services market by investing in the human resources and organizational capabilities necessary to pursue business strategies based on relationship banking. American depository institutions can realize the benefits of relationship banking if they commit themselves to creating stronger internal labor markets and reducing employee turnover.

 

California Management Review

Berkeley-Haas's Premier Management Journal

Published at the University of California for more than sixty years, California Management Review seeks to share knowledge that challenges convention and shows a better way of doing business.

Learn more
Follow Us