Examining unethical sales practices in retail banking: a hermeneutic analysis of employee perceptions in Brazil

Abstract

This study aims to investigate unethical sales practices in retail banking from the perspective of bank employees. Our analysis adopted an interpretative approach, and we applied a hermeneutic framework to explore the meanings that the informants—fifteen bank employees in Brazil—ascribed to their experiences of financial services. Drawing on the literature on ethical behavior in organizations and Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development theory, we identify patterns of self-interested corporate sales practices that dilute the assumption of any responsibility for unethical behavior and blame customers using the discourse of consumer responsibility. Our findings reveal the mechanisms of how and why bank employees justify self-interested sales practices, and we offer insights into the actions needed to improve consumer agency and develop a culture of ethical behavior in banks. We shed new light on how bank employees’ unethical acts become embedded in organizational structures and processes, how behaviors are internalized by members of the organization as being permissible and even desirable behavior, and how members pass along such behaviors to next generations of employees.