Accounting Headline 8.6 A further example of particular stakeholders' concern about attributes of an organisation's performance Give lone parents credit, banks told PHILLIP INMAN Single parents struggling with debts are ill-served by the banking industry, which punishes them with high interest rates on loans or refuses to offer credit at all, pushing them into the arms of doorstep lenders, the charity One Parent Families said yesterday. Despite large government subsidies through the tax credit system, which have improved the finances of single parents over the past four years, banks and other lenders continue to discriminate against them and force them to pay more for credit. Almost half (48%) of single-parent families had been in arrears in the past year, compared with a quarter of two-parent families. Even those parents who choose to work often fail to rid themselves of short-term, costly debts. The incidence of debt among working lone parents is twice as high as among couples where one person is in work- 14% compared to 7%, according to the report. The charity said a 32-page report, Personal Finance and One-Parent Families: The Facts, revealed the wide-ranging problems faced by lone parents, who were more likely to use overdrafts, credit cards and personal loans than couples with children. ... banks had to do more to make basic bank accounts easier to open. Like other low- income groups, single parents will often be shy of opening a current account, fearing excessive surcharges for unapproved overdrafts or bounced cheques. Most high-street banks have developed stripped-down current accounts-known as basic bank accounts-following demands by the Treasury that they support measures to end financial exclusion among poorer households. But low-income groups have criticised banks for doing little to promote them. Ms Simpson said the Treasury should consider setting a target for the number of basicaccounts to be opened by 2006. She said ministers should consider ways to persuad mainstream banks to lend small sums at low cost, attracting single parents away fro doorstep lenders that charge between 50% and 190% interest on loan products. The Guardian, 11 January 2005. Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2005 The above discussion has separately considered the normative moral/ethical perspective of Stakeholder Theory and the managerial (power-based) perspective of Stakeholder Theory. However, a risk of discussing these two branches separately is that it could be construed that management might be either ethically/morally aware or solely focused on the survival of the organisation, whereas in practice there is likely to be a continuum of possible positions between these two absolute points. Considering the two perspectives separately will give a partial view only, as it is unlikely that the managers of any company will be at one or other of the absolute extremes of the continuum. Instead, the managers of many companies will arguably be driven by both ethical considerations and performance-based decisions-not just one or the other. As Wicks (1996) argues, many people have embraced a conceptual framework in which ethical considerations and market considerations are seen as constituting a categorically and independent realism. Wicks argues that this view is unrealistic, since it implies that people cannot introduce 'moral imaginations when they act in the market world'. In terms of future research in Stakeholder Theory, Rowley (1998) provides some interesting advice. He states (p. 2): The blurring of normative and descriptive analysis is problematic for the field, however, dividing them into separate camps is equally hazardous. I believe that if our most challenging issues 10 years from 382 now are to be different from today, we will need to collectively understand the complementary roles that normative and descriptive research play in our research questions. Like market and society we cannot think of one without the other. Again, we are left with a view that particular theories (of accounting) can provide us with only a partial view, and hence it is sometimes useful to consider the insights provided by different theoretical perspectives. One additional systems-oriented theoretical perspective, which has only recently begun to be applied to an analysis of voluntary corporate reporting decisions, is Institutional Theory. Institutional Theory supports the determinant of legitimacy. This theory explains that organisations are faced with institutional pressures and, as a result of these pressures, organisations within a field tend to become similar in their forms and practices