Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/316457 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
ZNWU Discussion Paper No. 15
Publisher: 
Hochschule Darmstadt, Fachbereich Wirtschaft, Zentrum für Nachhaltige Wirtschafts- und Unternehmenspolitik ZNWU, Darmstadt
Abstract: 
What defines the role of public savings banks("Sparkassen") in tackling the socio-ecological challenges related to planetary boundaries, such as climate change and loss of biodiversity? A clear answer to this question is still lacking, in spite of that fact that the German Sparkassen have recently become more ambitious with respect to their role in the sustainability transformation. Taking these recent developments into account, we provide a qualitative empirical analysis of the institutional logics that shape the savings banks' response to repeated calls to deepen their involvement in ecological sustainability efforts. We argue that the lack of transformative potential that many observers have criticized is due to a specific combination of institutional logics, that emphasize compliance, competitiveness and controlling activities. Moreover, savings banks appear to be following a strategy of conservative transformation, consistent with the approaches they have followed in recent decades, to survive in a climate hostile to public ownership of financial institutions and relationship banking. We observe tendencies to make climate finance a vehicle to become relationship-orientated again, and identify the obstacles standing in the way of such a twist.
Subjects: 
Savings Banks
Climate Finance
Sustainability
Institutional Logics
Financialization
JEL: 
B15
B25
B26
B52
E02
E58
N2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.