Basel II

: en reglerings inflytande på motivation i banksektorn

Abstract

The Basel Accords are a collection of recommendations and regulations aimed to establish a global financial stability. Basel II is directed towards credit institution and investment firms in those countries that have chosen to incorporate the regulations in national law. In Sweden the Basel II was incorporated in the Swedish law at the beginning of 2007, and since then the Basel II has became binding for the Swedish banks.

Basel II stipulates that banks must use in-house developed models to evaluate risks and capital requirement, and defines that the evaluations must be used in decision making in the daily work. The requirements defined by the regulations increase the corporate governance since the development of strategies and control systems for such risk models is done on a high organizational level, at the bank’s head office. The dilemma in this is that the implementation of the regulation, which influences the organizational structure of the bank, becomes a difficult question to manage, and it delivers a huge impact on the employees with operative tasks.

Through eight semi-structured interviews with employees with operative tasks at four Swedish banks, it is the purpose of this study to create an insight into what influence regulations, such as Basel II, have on the motivation at work. The findings indicate that regulations, which bring changes to work on operative level, can affect the motivation if the employees do not understand the purpose. Based on the views of the employees we can show that communication and leadership play a decisive role for how the employees will experience the influence of such regulations. Regarding this result the interpretation is that communication and leadership should be based on the employees’ previously experiences and knowledge, to prevent that change in work will cause dissatisfaction because of defective understanding.