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This article looks at the experience of management of technological innovation and mechanisation by British financial institutions. It highlights the indigenous assessment of technology, reflecting on local and American influences in two types of business organisations within the financial sector to demonstrate the nature of responses and the timing of the introduction of new methods and machinery. The adoption of Information Technology (IT) and computer applications in particular play a crucial role, though one that is intimately connected with a strategic expansion of corporate business, this growth being reflected in terms of size of business and also territorial expansion, as each of the institutions considered here constructed a national network of retail branch outlets. Discussion of established literature for the high street banks is combined with archivally informed analysis of similar, but previously undocumented, developments on the part of building societies. By taking a long-term view of these developments in the twentieth century, and by comparing the experiences of two different sets of institutions, the article highlights the strategic factors that influenced the decisions taken by senior managers in their transformation of British retail financial services.

This article identifies whether top managers in banks’ parent companies are highly involved in the design of strategy and examines how management styles influence (or reflect influences) on diversification decisions within bank markets. Alongside this assessment, the research ranks the main concerns to design strategy in banking within an international setting (including the role of information and telecommunication technologies in the design and implementation of banks’ diversification strategies). Results emerging from triangulating responses suggested that, on balance, top managers in bank markets are predisposed to integrate around purely strategic rather than purely financial targets or a combination of strategic and financial performance. Management of diversity does not seem to be time invariant. with results suggesting that information technology management played a secondary role in the design of bank strategy but, at the same time, information technology applications were perceived as an important force to modify competition in bank markets.

This research assesses the success of collaboration agreements through changes in competitive strength rather than the longevity of the transactions or the formality and visible structure of the agreements. To establish competitive strength, as development and renewal of capabilities, the research proceeds through the review of the alliance between the Co-operative Permanent Building Society, the Co-operative Wholesaling Society, Scottish Co-operative Wholesaling Society and Co-operative Insurance Society (1943-65). This cooperative agreement allows insights into the strategy of non-banks and nonfinance participants aiming to enter British bank markets. The research also considers the rather different process at Spanish savings banks, with a particular focus on IT outsourcing (1977-95). Cases in the UK and Spain form an historical argument and are used to demonstrate how the implementation of strategy is as important as strategic visioning to achieve competitive advantage in bank markets.

This paper invites readers to look into how beliefs about future events help to better understand organizational change. Our argument is that the adoption of information technology and the adoption of new organizational forms around it have been driven by shifts in collective ideas of legitimate organizational development. As an example we focus on the establishment during the 1960s of a vision within US retail financial services, namely of the "cashless/checkless society". The article tells of the power of this "imaginaire" to bring consensus in driving actual technological developments.Keywords: imaginaires, expectations, isomorphism, cashless society, payment systems, USA Acknowledgements: We appreciate comments and suggestions of Walter Friedman, Lou Galambos,