ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the client-operator relationship in a Bank of the Credito Cooperativo system (BCC), a bank characterized by a strong link with the territorial identity, interlocked with a particular activation of trust in the face-to-face client–operator interaction in the branches. The Credito Cooperativo is a group of locally embedded Italian banks with mutualistic goals. In fact, they are cooperative banks established at the end of the 1800s with Christian inspiration in order to include in the banking system people normally excluded from it, such as agricultural workers in the countryside and the working class in the cities. The moral approach to the economy of the BCCs is based on the self-representation as different banks. By using the results of a qualitative case study, the chapter shows the reasons why to consider a BCC bank as different; how this difference is performed; and through which type of social relationships and relating to which values.
