How then have the banks responded to these challenges of change? Morison (1989) highlights the conflict between the professional ethos and the marketing ethos that has emerged as a result of the environmental changes. The professional ethos of banking is that commercial banking is more akin to a profession than a trade5. There is a
commitment to formal vocational training, and an observation of high professional standards in the day to day conduct of the business. The marketing ethos of banking is that commercial banking is more akin to a trade than a profession and like a trade, will survive only to the extent that those engaged in it can identify and profitably meet the demands of the market place.
The conflicts between the two cultures have certain consequences: To begin with, staff in the banks feel that the mounting pressure on them to sell the banks' services are
4Although in the 1980s the banks tended to over-man these central support functions, and are now cutting them back to size.
5Seal and Croft (1995) highlight the debate over the notion of professionalism in banking; Bankers complain that banking is now, more a business and less of a profession than it used to be. The professional side largely being related to the Institute of Bankers exams and the business side to accounting, IT and marketing.
compromising their conventional role as financial guide, mentor and friend to their customers. The Banks have faced genuine conflicts of expectation on the part of their customers which have not been easy to reconcile. A conflict between the traditional renumeration systems, based originally on age and then on seniority or responsibility, and the new systems, which are based much more explicitly on the achievement of results achieved against stated performance objectives. A further conflict has also arisen between a tradition of lifetime security of employment and a need for bank to shed surplus labour and chasten under-performers. This means that the assumptions about what it takes to succeed, or even to survive, in a bank which used to be very clear-cut are now very blurred, giving rise to feelings of unease on the part of people who are far from sure how they are to be judged.
There is a conflict between the attitudes and expectations of traditional clearing bank employees and those of the increasingly large number of key executives who have come in from different backgrounds. There has been an increasing tendency to bring bankers in from different backgrounds to fill line management jobs. Early retirement is offered to or forced upon those unable to change their ways; performance-related pay for those who can, and promotion on performance and ability, rather than simply as a matter of time served.
These changes have not spawned a single new culture but have spawned a variety of cultures. Morison (1989) argues that Banks have had to adopt a cultural pluralism with a variety of distinctive characteristics and styles in co-existence throughout the
new and these combined values have to be translated into higher standards of service, into more streamlined operations and into higher profits.
Conclusion
As a result of the sweeping changes that have taken place in the UK Banking Sector organisational change, and the way it is managed emerge as a key dynamic of this research. Change has been compulsory for the UK Clearing Banks, in order to
accomodate the change in the environment. The next chapter discusses different models of organisational change and locates the study in a theoretical framework based upon organisational change.
Chapter 2
M odels of Organisational Change Reviewed Introduction
This chapter describes the various approaches to organisational change, which have been discussed in the literature, and details the theoretical model used in the research. It is now widely accepted in the literature on organisational change that studies of change cannot be limited to context-free descriptions of change techniques and effects but must explore the processual dynamic of these changes. Change is viewed as a dynamic fluid process, attention is focused on understanding the “content, context and process” (Pettigrew 1987) of organisational change and consequently only a handful of organisational change models are discussed in this chapter.
Organisational change in the bank was an important element of the overall bank strategy. There are different types of changes occurring and it is intended that the chosen
theoretical framework will help to establish the overall effect of this change on the organisation.
The chapter provides a brief overview of existing models of organisational change. It does not try to distinguish which are good theories of change, but highlights the key elements of each. Particular emphasis is placed on Laughlin's (1991) model and its relationships (i.e. in terms of links and overlaps) with other models which exist in the literature on organisational change. Two other models are then discussed (Pettigrew 1985a, Tranfield and Smith 1987). These other models are discussed because they do have certain merits, but were discounted because much of the richness of the case study was lost.