Características de un Gerente de Comercio Exterior

The case study financial institutions described in Section 3.4.1 were selected from each of three capitalisation tiers comprising large, medium and small. As a result, the sample of cases is thought to be broadly representative of financial institutions in Australia that include banking as part of their service offerings. From the participant interviews, the participating banks, despite capitalisation size differences, were confirmed to offer similar kinds of products and services, including transaction processing, payment risk management and liquidity in working capital finance. The institutions also offered advisory services to clients, for example, to navigate international payment methods for export and import risk management and ensure cost-effective financing.

An organisational structure shows how responsibilities for undertaking activities are directed through divisional business units or their equivalents towards the achievement of organisational objectives. An organisational structure is the perspective through which an organisation views its internal environment. Based on participant interviews with the senior

generalised financial institution functional structure was developed in the first stage of the research process (see Figure 3.6), from the questions from the second and third participant interview steps shown in Appendix A. As described in Section 3.4.4, the semi-structured interviews that preceded the application of CRT methods asked participants about the main divisions or business areas of their organisations. They were asked to adjust and validate drafts of an organisational structure that would be generally applicable to the financial institution cases. This comprises the main business divisions and the business units generally located within the divisions. It was agreed with the participants that this would be a consensus developed representation of generalised banking services. In response to questions about the validity of the structure developed, Participant 1 commented that despite the different tier sizes

of deposit-taking institutions in Australia, the structure and functions ‘are often very similar,

in my experience of the sector, despite volume differences in retail or wholesale banking, or

the range or mixture of other financial products offered’. Figure 4.1 shows the generalised

representation of the financial institution organisational structure developed with the participants and generally applicable to each of the case studies. The specific organisational structure charts internal to each of the three institutional cases were commercial-in-confidence and not able to be reproduced. However, the generalised depiction shown in Figure 4.1 was thought suitable for public domain research purposes by the participants.

The institutional structure provides a point of reference for the interviews about risk and offers a staged approach to the participant inquiries building successively from each functional level and business area to develop a view of the entire institution. The institutional structure also describes how the case study data from the interviews on risk would be organised and portrayed in the CRT depictions. As shown in Figure 4.1, the financial institutional structure was validated as generally comprising three functional levels: the operations level, the business strategy level and the corporate strategy level. These are described in the next sections. 4.2.1 Operations level

The operations level of the financial institution shown in Figure 4.1. The functions are consistent with those described by Handfield (2013) in consideration of enterprise level consideration of risk where operational risks are distinguished from strategy risks. The operations level comprises those business operations that interface with both retail and business customers. It includes retail banking including customer-facing ATMs, internet banking and bank branch services. It also includes wholesale and business-to-business banking, financial products and marketing, and frontline operational technology services. Across all these business areas, it was agreed with participants to include people-centred services, external service provider management, regulatory compliance and technology functions.

4.2.2 Business strategy level

The business strategy level includes the organisational functions of business decision-making, operational strategy formulation and guidance for implementation into operations. This level provides the strategies that guide and shape the characteristics of retail operations, business

and wholesale banking business operations and enabling technology services. Figure 4.1 shows how business strategy units are aligned to divisional structures and guide banking operations. The business units at this level include the backroom functions that drive operational policies and sit behind the frontline, and customer-facing services that are located at the operational level.

4.2.3 Corporate strategy level

The corporate level functions shown in Figure 4.1 focus on corporate vision and mission, and provides for medium-to-longer-term strategic guidance of the organisation. The function of this level is to shape the nature and formulation of business strategy and the business as a whole. It takes account of environmental threats and opportunities, with the goal of maximising achievement of the corporate vision or mission. The corporate strategy level sets the policies that govern the organisation as a whole, and represents the organisation externally by ensuring

policies are aligned with the requirements of the regulatory environment.

The corporate strategy covers four main areas, including the consumer businesses (aligned with retail banking), corporate, small and medium business customers (aligned to business banking), product and market business functions (aligned with the wholesale business), and enterprise services guiding all technology-related functions. Figure 4.1 shows how these corporate level functions are aligned and guide banking organisational divisions and business units.

In summary, according to the participants, from the questions shown in Appendix A, Figure 4.1 is the cumulative outcome of the stage of the interview inquiries regarding organisational characteristics and represents a consensus view developed with the participants. According to

the participants, this representation of structural and functional organisation is generally typical of most banking and financial institutions operating in Australia. For example, in response to the validation interview inquiry stage questions on organisational characteristics, Participant 7 reported of the organisational structure representation:

It might vary in the very specific details and in the names given to a function in a particular organisation, but overall it is a reasonable representation of the generalised structure of Australian banks.

In the next section, detailed CRTs, which were iteratively developed with the participants, are presented and described (see Section 3.5 and Figure 3.6 for a description of the participant inquiry process). The CRT maps the dynamic relationships that occur between core risk effects, and the financial institution functions and structures. This provides a basis for making sense of the nature of risk causality in large and complex financial institutions.