Graduation day, and the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one.

My doctoral thesis: In the decade prior to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) aspired to become the largest bank in the world, and, for a short period in 2008, it achieved this ambition. But post-crisis, the RBS brand developed widespread social disapproval, a discrediting that yielded a “spoiled social identity” that negatively impacted the employer/employee relationship and led to enhanced organisational risk emerging from a psychological contract breach (PCB) with its employees.

Prior research in PCB failed to account for employee retrospections of the past and expectations for the future. My doctoral thesis and now book identifies how blame and the absence of accountability and responsibility for RBS’s part in the GFC 2008 caused RBS retail employees to become the only group to face the full weight of the customer and public dissatisfaction throughout the decade post-crisis.

How RBS retail employees responded to the social disapproval established within the popular discourse, changes in the perception of RBS bank, and the decade of slow and painful recovery stimulated interest in employee resilience and well-being over a prolonged period post-crisis. I demonstrate how change modifies not only the psychological contract within the internal employer/employee relationship, but how change also impacts the employees’ external, social, and personal environments.

Thank you to everyone who supported me through this remarkable journey.