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Outlines the adaptation process in the distribution channel structure of the retail banking sector as a consequence of the introduction of electronic channels, such as telephone banking, PC banking and Internet banking. Based on responses from 42 retail banks in Denmark, their distribution channel strategies are described and their relation to selected marketing mix elements is examined. Most Danish retail banks attach decisive importance to offering a customer-friendly PC bank service, whereas fewer of them attach the same importance to telephone, Internet and branch banking. A multiple channel strategy combining several channels is the most popular.

Recent trends in the leadership literature have advanced a relational and processual perspective that sheds light on the way leadership emerges and evolves in dynamic and flexible organizations. However, very few empirical studies have explored these processes over an extended period. To address this lacuna, we report findings from a three-year ethnographic study that explored the emergence and development of leadership in a selfmanaged interorganizational R&D team. Findings show that in the context of various events that impacted on the team, leadership emerged through interactions, processes, and practices that were perceived by team members to develop and advance shared goals and shared identity. Leadership responses to uncertainty surrounding the project were generally legitimated by team members' background and expertise in relation to this shared identity, while a lack of perceived legitimacy also compromised leadership. These observations are consistent with arguments that leadership revolves around the creation and enactment of shared social identity. However, they also suggest that the form and nature of leadership is hard to predict because it is heavily structured by specific identity-relevant practices and perceptions that arise in the context of unforeseeable events.

Internet banking has now become such a well-established fact in the most developed countries that it is possible to map its actual role in customer relations. Based on a recent empirical study in the banking industry in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden this paper traces important antecedents of Internet-banking adoption and analyses its impact on relationship-marketing performance. Based on structural equation modeling, the findings offer some support to the view that the more advanced Internet applications adopted and the more attractive the website the more the banks are able to keep profitable customers. However, the results question whether it pays to be a first-mover and organizational factors related to market orientation and customer relationship management seem to have a much stronger impact on customer-related performance.

Neither market orientation nor the possible link to performance is easily achieved and in various countries companies may organize differently to cope with the information-processing and customer-responding challenges. Nationwide surveys in banks in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden indicate that a path to performance involves innovations such as "supported empowerment" though there are differences in the antecedents of market orientation. Thus the most distinct Scandinavian ways to improvements may be found in Sweden. Especially Swedish banks and to a lesser extent Finnish banks are upfront in their use of "the technology of customer-focusing". Nevertheless, the overall analyses based on rigorous structural equation modeling lead to the estimation of a model reflecting causal relationships which seem to be independent of nationality.