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MyBank Case Study
MyBank Case Study
Online: Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation
From this perspective, the assumption that underlies much of the change literature – that it is possible to
mark out an orderly change programme that can be actioned to bring about immediate performance gains
– is seen to offer a false promise through ‘dangerously seductive reasoning’ that incorrectly suggests that
change management techniques can be used to quickly turn around an organization suffering from
declining market share (Mintzberg et al., 2010: 99). There is a misunderstanding of time and context in
trying to predict a linear ordered path to an unknowable future in response to a shift in market position that
reflects past actions and developments and not just the immediate present. In this view, change is not a
snapshot event that happens but is ongoing in organizations that have a past and a context. As Weick
argues in his critique of preformed consultant solutions to the problems of change: ‘When consultant
gurus sweep in with their promises of magical transformation through programs invented elsewhere the
wise manager thinks twice before allowing the show to unfold’ (2000: 238).
In this chapter we have examined the paradox of change and highlighted the range of models, frames
and theories that have been developed to explain the complex processes of innovation and change. Various
attempts to classify theories of change were discussed and more than twenty different theories and
approaches to explaining organizational change were identified and described. Armed with this
knowledge, we examined some realworld examples of company success and decline, and the attempts by
writers to distil out the key ingredients for enduring success. Although some general rules of thumb were
noted there are no golden bullets. In practice, change is a complex dynamic process that is influenced by a
range of elements, including history, context, time and people, towards a future that it ultimately
unknowable. The complexity of change is mirrored by the range and breadth of theoretical developments
that emerge from core assumptions about the nature of existence (ontology). We noted how, for example,
critical notions of continuity and change (stability and flux) continue to present alternative and generally
competing views of the world that underpin theorization and methodological choices in the study of
change and in the development of explanatory models and frames. In the next chapter we examine in
greater detail planned and process approaches to understanding change and innovation in organizations.
RESOURCES, READINGS AND REFLECTIONS
CASE STUDY 5.1 MYBANK: A CASE STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
BY CAMERON ALLAN AND PATRICK DAWSON
Our illustrative case examines an attempt to implement a new managerial approach to the practice of
Human Resource Management (HRM) that required a reorganization of work in the development of
collaborative employee relations. The case demonstrates how the commitment of middle management
to strategy implementation cannot be taken for granted and can significantly influence the successful
management of change, particularly in cases where differing vested interests between management
levels and functions do not align with strategic objectives. The case study of a mediumsized bank
(referred to as Mybank), identifies and analyses the range of choices that were open to managers in
developing implementation strategies, and how these were modified over time. In particular, attention
is given to a change in management strategy from bottomup implementation to a topdown approach.
The bottomup approach to change
During the 1990s, one of the senior executives of Mybank became convinced of the benefits of a
quality improvement programme for reducing costs in forming quality improvement teams to identify
and rectify inefficient work systems through the elimination of waste and rework. The attraction of
such an initiative also stemmed from its potential to achieve cost reduction inhouse, using existing
staff to improve quality and customer service as well as offering the organization an ongoing
methodology for continuous improvement.
In embarking on change, the implementation strategy adopted was as follows. An outside consultant
was used to introduce the philosophy and tools of the change programme to senior and middle
managers in a series of workshops. Once familiar with the concepts and principles, these managers
were then expected to encourage their staff to form quality improvement teams to solve specific work
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problems identified by either the general staff or managers. The involvement of general staff was seen
as a crucial issue: operational staff were seen to be intimately acquainted with their own work
processes and thus ideally placed to recognize existing inefficiencies and to make recommendations to
rectify them. To assist in the implementation process, a quality support group of two people was
established to provide training and facilitation for general staff involved in quality improvement
projects. In time, it was hoped, the philosophy and methodology of continuous improvement would
become an integral part of everybody’s job. This model relied on a bottomup approach based on
operative staff involvement with support from management. As one manager expressed it:
‘Management’s role was to support it and to encourage it rather than be involved in it.’ As it turned
out, this initiative was only fully implemented and operationalized in a limited number of areas
(mainly in departments with routinized administrative tasks).
Participation in quality improvement teams was voluntary and comprised five to 10 intra
department general staff and a quality coordinator from the quality support department. The role of the
quality coordinator was to act as a facilitator, mediator and trainer for the team. Once a problem had
been identified, the team would consult with any persons or departments that either used the output to
the work system or supplied input into the system. The team would then identify possible
inefficiencies, analyse why these may occur and then make recommendations to management as to
how the system could be improved. Interestingly, the views of general staff about the new initiative
were polarized: they either hated it or loved it. Those that hated it either didn’t want to be involved,
didn’t understand it, or were simply happy just to get on with their own work. As a supervisor put it:
‘They don’t want to get involved. They just want to do their 40 hours.’
Employees who embraced the initiative were particularly excited about being given the opportunity
to contribute to the construction of their own work organization. As one staff member recalled: ‘I have
never worked in an organization [until this one] that wanted to hear the input of ... those down the
bottom.’ Other staff expressed initial trepidation but once involved became active supporters: ‘It was
absolutely terrific, it improved our system there, 100 per cent, 150 per cent. It’s great!’ In part, the
enthusiasm of some employees can be explained by the material improvement in their working lives:
I was working overtime, at times, back until 7.30, 8.00 o’clock at night and he [the manager] told me I had to
take three days off all my work, forget about it totally and go into this room and do this thing. Oh my God,
I’m going to be here till doomsday, trying to fix this thing up. It took three days, and it was great. It made
such a difference that we stopped doing overtime. It was amazing. Helped us out tremendously.
Indeed, so successful were some projects that operations or procedures that had taken weeks were
reduced to a matter of days. However, even among the most ardent supporters, enthusiasm soon
waned. This was due to two factors. First, employees were still expected to complete all their other
tasks in addition to the work required by the change projects. Consequently, improvement meetings
that lasted one or two hours could result in quantitative work overload. Even managers who were
supportive recognized this problem, as one stated: ‘The resistance you get is “Hey! When do I have to
do this by, I am flat strapped now!”’ The second factor that caused disillusionment among employees
was that management rarely accepted their recommendations for improvements. This was seen to be
particularly frustrating given the time, effort and enthusiasm many staff had put into projects. As one
employee explained:
I was leading a project ... looking at our relationship with builders and underconstruction loans in general.
We saw it through to completion; we had some recommendations that we thought were good ones. Some of
them were put in place but the major ones weren’t. Upper levels of senior management in the bank decided
that it wasn’t the way to go, and we weren’t going to do that. That was really running into a brick wall.
The nonlinear process of change
The failure for the change initiative to be adopted in many areas of the organization was due to a
number of reasons. The most important was the reluctance of senior and middle managers to actively
support the change. They were sceptical about the initiative and felt that it was better suited to the
manufacturing sector rather than financial service operations (one more ‘openminded’ manager did
concede that the initiative could have some use in administrative areas of the organization). As one
manager expressed: ‘We are more administrative than a lot of other areas and therefore responded to it
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a little bit better than other parts of the branch.’ Many managers were of the opinion that their
departments were already overworked and simply could not afford to allow their staff to take time off
to become involved in this change initiative. For some, the acceptance of change implied, implicitly at
least, that managers recognized that their departments were currently inefficient and improvements
were possible. Interestingly, one of the most common reasons expressed for the lack of adoption was
the lack of commitment from top management. As one person put it:
They [management] agree that they understand the concept, that they felt it is necessary and they see the
advantages, but when it comes to the rolemodelling or leading or doing, they back away at a million miles an
hour. Maybe they have got too much real work to do, maybe they don’t really understand anyway ... I don’t
believe that we have still passed the first step. That is, have a common understanding at the top and a total
commitment.
The Managing Director also played a part in influencing the process of change. He had a relaxed
management style and assumed that departments would become involved in quality improvement
projects on their own accord. Participation was not mandatory. Although this ‘friendly’ and open
management style imbued the organization with a strong culture of family values based on respect for
the individual, many people also interpreted it as a lack for support from the Managing Director for the
initiative. By 2001, the twin effects of limited senior management support and middle management
resistance meant that the initiative had ground to a halt.
The topdown approach to change
In 2003, senior management decided to once again review the company’s cost structure. Mybank had
committed themselves to building a new corporate headquarters and the prospect of this major
financial outlay plus the firm’s continuing high level of operating expenses stimulated the firm to seek
cost savings. The firm brought in a large accounting firm to examine the company’s operations and to
make recommendations on how best to reduce costs and improve performance. In an almost identical
fashion to events previously, the firm elected to use an employee involvement initiative to achieve the
potential cost savings identified by the consultant group. However, on this occasion the bank adopted a
topdown rather than the bottomup approach to the implementation of change. A consultant was
brought in from America to help the organization with their implementation strategy. The consultant
recommended that senior managers play a major role in the change initiative. Their role was to
identify organizational problems and the likely causes; specify how improvements in performance
were to be measured and what the acceptable level of performance would be; nominate individuals to
analyse and rectify the problems; and specify timeframes. This implementation strategy was expected
to motivate middle managers through highlighting the commitment of senior management. In practice,
however, this topdown approach also had its difficulties.
The General Manager of Retail Banking illustrates an example of some of these problems in using a
topdown approach to amalgamate two of his lending sections. The bank had two personal lending
sections: a housing loans section, and a consumer loans section for credit cards, overdrafts and
personal loans. Within the established banks there would normally only be one lending section which
would process both types of loans. The disadvantages of having two separate sections were that many
personal clients would often have both types of loans. Thus, having their records spread across two
separate sections led to duplication and created administrative problems for the management of
clients’ accounts.
In addition to the integration of two departments, the General Manager also elected to introduce a
new management layer that had experience with both forms of lending. Traditionally, staff in the
housing loans section knew little or nothing about personal lending and vice versa. Consequently,
managers experienced in both forms of lending were recruited and located between supervisory staffs
and the Departmental Manager, with the title of Regional Lending Managers. However, rather than
physically combine the two areas in one location and develop training systems to allow the multi
skilling of staff over time, the task of integration was seen to provide the bank with an ideal
opportunity to critically examine the whole structure of work systems in order to eliminate
unproductive tasks and perhaps reduce staff levels. As such, the integration of the two departments
became a major change project.
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Four newly appointed Regional Lending Managers were given the task by the General Manager of
amalgamating the departments to ensure that the new process became operational within a sixmonth
timeframe. This group discussed and formulated an implementation strategy through consultation with
employees in both departments to establish the timing and range of functions and tasks performed.
Each task was then scrutinized to determine whether it was ‘value adding’, ‘rework’ or ‘nonvaluing’.
Where possible, tasks that were classified as ‘rework’ or ‘nonvalue adding’ were eliminated. The
remaining work tasks were then flowcharted and bunches of related tasks lumped together to form
new jobs. Staff were then allocated to these new jobs. The redesigned process reduced staff numbers
by eight. The bank had a policy of not retrenching people, and those personally eliminated from the
new system either found alternative positions within the bank or they were kept on as ‘floating’ staff
until they were able to find positions elsewhere.
Although the project was given total support from the General Manager, the new Regional Lending
Managers experienced a lot of middle management resistance. For example, some of the Departmental
Managers immediately superior to the Regional Lending Managers strongly resisted their proposed
redesign of work organization. These managers were intimately acquainted with the old processes and
felt that the new design was at best unrealistic and at worst unworkable. This middle managerial
resistance slowed down the progress of the change and acted as a major barrier to securing outcomes
within the sixmonth timeframe. In the case of two managers their obstruction was so harmful to the
project that they were relieved of their posts. The effect on staff morale was quite devastating. Both
managers were liked and respected by their staff. One, in particular, had spent almost his entire
working life with the organization and the way he was treated was highly disturbing for other staff. As
one employee put it:
You know, even us, we’re sort of thinking: ‘Well, I’ve been with the bank for 15 years ... and look what they
did to Garry. They weren’t very kind to him. How are they going to be with me?’
Staff morale had also deteriorated because of the way in which general staff and supervisors were
consulted about the design of the new system. As one change agent pointed out:
We simply could not have involved everyone in the reorganization of retail lending. No one could think of a
way to do that because everyone would have a different idea of the way it should be. It would have got too
big. So we decided to use a small team.
This topdown approach to change offended many of the general staff, especially those who had
previously been actively involved in the earlier ‘bottomup’ change projects. Once again, the
implementation of change did not prove successful, only this time the strategy adopted by senior
management had failed in its intentions to mobilize middle management commitment and local staff
enthusiasm. In the words of one general staff member who had been a very active participator in the
bottomup approach:
Whereas before people used to be involved and we were having hassles trying to convince the people that
were up there [management] to get involved. Now it seems to be them, up there, just telling, like a Hitler type
of situation, telling these people down here ‘This is what you are to do!’
Questions
1. With reference to the case study, outline the advantages and disadvantages of a bottomup and top
down approach to change implementation.
2. How important is employee commitment to the successful management of change?
3. List the major reasons for employee resistance to change and suggest ways in which these
‘obstacles’ to change can best be tackled.
4. Discuss whether the Managing Director served as an ‘inhibitor’ or ‘facilitator’ of change and
evaluate the effects that this may have had on the introduction of the various change initiatives.
5. Are Palmer and colleagues’ (2009: 27097) six images (ideal types) of managing change useful for
understanding the changes that happened in this case study? Explain your answer on the basis of
the case material, the literature and your own experiences at work.
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CHAPTER REVIEW QUESTIONS
The questions listed below relate to the chapter as a whole and can be used by individuals to further
reflect on the material covered, as well as serving as a source for more open group discussion and
debate.
1. How useful is the images of managing change framework for locating and making sense of change
management theories?
2. Identify and explain a set of guiding principles for the strategic management of change and
innovation.
3. Why do businesses in highly competitive markets often feel under pressure to mimic the behaviour
of ‘successful’ competitors?
4. Discuss what you understand by the term ‘change paradox’.
HANDSON EXERCISE
Research a change model or theory of your choice and identify:
1. The major work/studies from which the theory developed (be aware of the context and time of
these developments).
2. The main elements of the proposed framework and how they relate to ach other.
3. Who the major supporters of this approach are and how far they differ in their use and adaptation
of this model.
4. The key criticisms that have been levelled at this perspective.?
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