The determinants of cooperative banks’ community service—empirical study from Poland

Abstract

This research concentrated on the socio-financial qualities of Poland’s co-op banking. The study’s results enabled answering the question of whether the cooperative banks (co-op banks) are exclusively focused on maximum financial effectiveness or faithful to the idea of cooperation, which basically means supporting its membership and community development. The main objective of the study was to determine the influence of internal factors on initiated support to the community within the framework defining the activities pertaining to a business’s social responsibility, as seen for Poland’s co-op banks. A seven-year study period was adopted, i.e., 2011–2017, inclusive. The research indicated that the co-op banks decide about a sum of contributions for community initiatives based on their current condition—according to current profits, current credits volume, total accounts number and considering financial security as expressed by the level of the solvency coefficient of the previous year.