Accountability in Complex Organizations: World Bank Responses to Civil Society

Several main observations are developed in the discussion below. First, while geographic availability of depository services to areas not served by private banks was always a prime justification of postal savings – in the United States as well as in Japan and Europe – it has not proved to be the major source of demand for postal savings, even if it was important to a few rural customers. From the start, the U.S. clientele of postal savings was concentrated in urban areas among immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, a group that had most reason to seek the safety of postal savings after their experience with unreliable...