"ECONOMIC violence" was used by senior managers at the Royal Bank of Scotland to win city backing for the bank's ill-fated expansion, according to a North-East study.

The research, by Newcastle University Business School and Leicester University, coined the term for a style of leadership which forced employees to meet aggressive sales targets and threatened them with redundancy.

This led to the bank's downfall company as individuals became caught up in battles for status with rival financial institutions, distracting them from RBS's severe problems, according to the study.

The research, published in the journal Organization Studies, provides an alternative explanation for the failure of the bank, based on management and social science rather than pure economics.

The 2008 collapse of RBS was one of the key events in the UK's credit crunch.

Ron Kerr, lecturer in organisational studies at Newcastle University Business School, said: revious executives at RBS had retained power by relying on 'symbolic violence'.

"The expression, coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, means the creation by leaders of the belief among those they lead, that the subordinate position is just and natural.

"However, within RBS the modernisers instead wielded what we term 'economic violence' to acquire and retain their leading role - a variation on Bourdieu's 'symbolic violence'.

"This meant a form of leadership that operated through the threat of destroying people's economic power by laying them off or forcing them to meet aggressive sales targets."