Internal Organization and Economic Performance: The Case of Large US Commercial Banks

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the impact of bank internal organization structure characteristics on costs and productive efficiency. The specific internal organization characteristics examined include centralized versus decentralized 1) decision-making, 2) service delivery systems, and 3) back-office operations, e.g. accounting, computing, and advertising, among others. The analysis is conducted using average data drawn from a sample of 118 large US commercial banks for the years 1989 and 1990. The analysis reveals that centralized decision-making tends to increase costs. Likewise, centralized service delivery systems either increase or have an insignificant impact on costs. In no case was it found that centralized service delivery systems reduce costs as is often envisioned by proponents of centralization. Centralized back-office operations were found to reduce costs significantly and is consistent with the existence of scale economies in bank back-office operations.