Embracing Market Liberalism? Community Structure, Embeddedness, and Mutual Savings and Loan Conversions to Stock Corporations.

This article examines how community embeddedness and local social structures influenced the conversion of mutual savings and loan associations (SLAs)—depositor-owned, community-based banks—to for-profit stock corporations in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s amid financial deregulation and market liberalization. Using event-history analysis of the full population of 3,764 mutual SLAs and county-level community data, the study finds that SLAs were more likely to convert when they were less locally embedded in residential mortgage lending and when their communities exhibited social disorganization, greater income inequality, ethno-racial segregation, and fewer working- or cross-class associations. Conversely, higher densities of elite-oriented civic, business, and professional associations increased conversion rates by providing organizational platforms for pro-market managerial coordination. The findings highlight that organizational responses to neoliberal market pressures were shaped not only by economic factors but also by the social and associational fabric of local communities, linking macro-level financialization with community-level dynamics of elite detachment and social fragmentation.