de, or at the least on a "country-wide" basis. While this similarity of function is due to the universal presence of banking as well as the presence of foreign banks in different countries (Athanassopoulous, et al, 1997, 2) it does not necessarily follow that there will be similar performance since there are many operational aspects differentiating the individualized performance of branches. Some of these areas include the use and manner in which technology is implemented as well as human resource differences, especially with regards to the manner of individual training.
In Europe, for example, the development of a "single market" has changed traditional thinking in terms of the general concept of banking. In the last ten (10) years there has been an increased level of international comparison of banking institutions (Berg, et al, 1993 and Allen and Rai, 1996) with a focus at the "corporate" banking level on issues such as minimization of cost and economies of scale. Driving down the comparisons to a more granular level (i.e., at the branch level) has
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