Stakeholder-defined corporate responsibility for a pre-credit-crunch financial service company: lessons for how good reputations are won and lost

This paper presents a study that identifies a stakeholder-defined concept of Corporate Responsibility (CR) in the context of a UK financial service organisation in the immediate pre-credit crunch era. From qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with employees and customers, we identify, in a wide-ranging stakeholder-defined concept of CR, six themes that together imply two necessary conditions for a firm to be regarded as responsible— both corporate actions and character must be consonant with CR. This provides both empirical support for a notable, recent theoretical contribution by Godfrey (in Acad Manag Rev 30:777–798, 2005) and novel lessons for reputation management practice.

The economic consequences of mortgage debt

Unsurprisingly, a great deal of attention has been paid to the economic consequences of the credit crunch. However, this paper shows that the credit crunch was preceded by a strong build-up of mortgage debt internationally, which, in the long run, could turn out to be more significant than the credit crunch itself. Indeed, the debt build-up suggests that the credit crunch is more likely to reoccur, because highly-indebted households have weaker buffers to withstand unexpected shocks to their incomes or to interest rates. The paper presents a model that can explain the debt build-up and changes to the distribution of debt between existing owners and first-time buyers, which hinders access to home-ownership for the latter, even amongst those households who would be considered as credit-worthy.

Resilience planning, economic change and the politics of post-recession development in London and Hong Kong

For much of the 1990s and 2000s, the emphasis of urban policy in many global cities was on managing and mitigating the social and environmental effects of rapid economic growth. The credit crunch of 2008 and the subsequent recession have undermined some of the core assumptions on which such policies were based. It is in this context that the concept of resilience planning has taken on a new significance. Drawing on contemporary research in London and Hong Kong, the paper shows how resilience and recovery planning has become a key area of political debate. It examines what is meant by conservative and radical interpretations of resilience and how conservative views have come to dominate ‘recovery’ thinking, with élite groups unwilling to accept the limits to the neo-liberal orthodoxies that helped to precipitate the economic crisis. The paper explores the implications of such thinking for the politics of urban development.

Credit flow [poetry]

A poem within the Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2011, a desk calendar and poetry anthology in one.