“How did banks change their CSR policies after the 2008 financial crisis?”

Details

Supervisors

Denis , Sabine ; Lejeune, Christophe

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en Ingénieur de gestion

Abstract

After the crisis of 2008, all newspapers pointed to the banking sector as the root of all evil. “Bankers took too much risk”, “Banks don’t care about the peoples’ money, only about their profit”, ... and those are only a few of the headlines published in major journals worldwide. But did banks actually do something with all those critics and was this event the so needed eye opener for a better future? Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept where companies do not only care about the profit for their shareholders but also care about every other stakeholder: employees, customers, society,… In the last couple of decennia companies are getting more and more familiar with this concept for numerous reasons. They see that an increased expenditure in CSR practices pays off in the long term. It is likely that after the crisis of 2008 banks would get more involved in CSR practices to regain the goodwill of their clients. But was this the case? Or were banks already heavily involved in CSR practices before and was this not enough to prevent a crisis to happen? This paper seeks to answer the research question “How did banks change their CSR policies after the financial crisis of 2008?”