ABSTRACT
Recent research by industrial economists on the history of banking is increasingly focused on the last three decades of the twentieth century. This body of work leaves much to be said regarding the process by which these heavy-footed, staid organizations turned into the “sleek” fi rms of today. To fi ll this lacuna, we need to delve into what may be called a “prehistory” of banking and its managerial practices. This chapter aims to assess how banks grew from being a rather informal structure which employed administrative tools and accounting practices dating back to the fi fteenth through the eighteenth centuries, to the highly “organized” edifi ce we see today. “Streamlining” was the keyword which instigated and determined this progression towards an entirely new type of service economy-from being “informal”, if not downright “disorganized”, to very much “formalized” and “streamlined”.
