Team members in general give several examples of reasons and suggestions for
improvements, but in the view of the researcher, the opinions presented by the team members is asynchronous from that of the team leaders. (“..focus on ease of use”, “..focus on cross- channel development”, “.. focus on new technology”, “,,focus on market”, “..need more customer understanding”, “..focus on mobile users”, “..Payment transaction improvement”, “..focus on attracting customers”.) (Employees statements from interview – Q404-018). (“..need to create stable banking industry”, “..focus on new players in the market”, “..need to focus on digitalization, globalization and generic tools”.) (Leaders statements from the
interview – Q404-018).
This is an example of a distance between opinions of the customer perspective and the need to communicate with customers and users of security products. Here, the split in opinions is not directly between leaders and workers, but is related to the tasks and group that the participants are involved in. It is a clear impression, by the researcher, that customers should be a part of the focus, but not necessarily too much. This is a dangerous situation since the banking
industry has changed from traditional banking to become more an IT company with e-banking as the product, as one participant explained the situation. This new mobile-market mega-trend within the industry also creates a need for closer contact with users of the solutions, but the willingness to engage and find outward - in systems is not universally present. The internal culture and behaviour is that the bank is the expert – ‘we know the solutions’– which is not necessarily good. The team focuses on changes; particularly valid opinions for the leaders, but the reason behind these can be difficult to understand. Is the change for an internal need or because of customer needs? Can the trend in the market take the focus away from the internal focus of changes or are the changes themselves the problem?
Bank X is a major, global body that will have a natural power distance, but an ‘invincible distance’ between the nearest leaders/workers can be the situation and the impression from interview statements. Evaluating the change itself, and how leaders and workers experience this, demonstrates a difference in how well the incorporation was. The leaders express
opinions of a different change model, while the team members are more satisfied. The reason for this difference may be that leaders are more familiar with the reasons behind a change and
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the expected goals, but it may also be an indication that team members are less interested. The lower interest in changes can be a result of too many changes, changes that have a low impact, and a lack of involvement in the recent change.
Figure 13: How should changes be incorporated differently?
A simple regression analysis demonstrates that there are differences in how leaders and team members understand organisational changes. This method can be used in prediction and forecasting of any data set, using dependent and independent variables. The method is in use throughout the thesis. The independent variables will act as the ‘predictor. Using regression analyses can uncover relationship between variables, but this is a simple form of displaying data. Causal relationship between dependent and independent variables can be one result, but false relationships or illusions can also be the outcome.
The independent variables, X, is displayed as the participants, 15 persons.
The dependent variable is displayed on the Y axis where the scaled answers form the data, 1-5.
The regression model relates Y to a function of X and β
The linear regression display a straight line through the set of the regression data (n) as a reference element. The linear regression focuses on the conditional probability distribution of y given X, to make a prediction of the value of y.
R2 lines in the graph show the number of answers higher than the lowest value (2), the percentage of answers in each group and the total that would probably have made the change
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differently. Y represents the feedback frequency. While leaders are more satisfied than the team members with the incorporation of the recent change, this can also be an indication to the leaders of a need to change their practices. Team members are in general satisfied, but this can also be an indication of resignation and feelings of ‘this is the way it is’. R2 points at high values, but the graph does explain the differences in this particular question. The level of satisfaction for team members might demonstrate that a change was necessary as seen from the team members’ perspectives, and there is more high-level feedback from the team members as well. A presentation of a potential miss-alignment between leaders and team members, where the leaders express higher satisfaction with the implementation of the change and the team members are satisfied with the change in general. 20 per cent of the leaders’ and 33 per cent of the team members’ answers were below ‘neutral’, indicating that several team members are dissatisfied, even if the total level of satisfaction is higher than for the leaders. Power distance in Norway and Scandinavian countries is very short, but even if the working tone is natural and open, there are still some problems. It is not clear whether or not the ‘invincible distance’ connects to power distance, communication or the virtual team setting, but minor challenges in regard to this issue are recognisable from some of the participants. Most participants are satisfied with their current organisational situation, but the interviews still give a different impression. Attention needs to this as a potential source of resistance to changes, individually or collectively, especially if workers are incapable of identifying themselves with new situations, new practices or new leaders (Ezafe, 2001). The experiences revealed here could indicate that the organisation is in danger of self-developing both
resistance and the invincible power distance explained above.
The analysis can provide answers to this dual organisational challenge by focusing on communication and internal structure, in addition to reasoning.
Asking for a consideration of whether the participants recognise Bank X as an organisation that can manage to follow up customer trends and market changes in the future reveals several angles and opinions. The team has some optimism, but feels that several areas need a different focus for this to become the situation. Two major obstacles are the distance between internal teams and the time to market for new solutions, which is too long. The research material is good here, since it consists of many suggestions for improvements for the future.
There are, however, several opinions present in the teams pointing at a changed or increased security focus because of the change. There are also statements of the change as something emerging from an attack form hackers towards Bank X and the online banking solution, which can demonstrate a reactive process in the bank. (“..”the change is a result of an
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attack”), (A leader’s explanation and respond to Q101-003). This reactive change, acting from an incident, reflects a strategy which need a capturing awareness process for the employee group, but only two people identified an increased strategic focus at this point of the interviews. While 60 per cent of the leaders emphasize strategies as important, only 10 per cent of the team members did so. These calculations are valid through the interviews
statements and answers and demonstrate a gap between management strategic thinking and employees’ capability of seeing this as important, which is an important issue to recognise. The responses from the employees are that strategies are a leader’s task, not something for the team, which can be a dangerous point of view. Assumption set three aims to discover if such a distance is present and if this can be a source for a lack of communication or little information from managers to the team when changes are in planning. The interviews can confirm that this misalignment to/from team/managers is indeed present, and this is an important concern for future changes.
This attitude can prevent input in the bottom-up format and in turn decrease the
management’s ability to capture important ideas and opinions from within the organisation. Assumption set two considers if this missing bottom-up approach is also a reason for the current and future organisational changes. Top-down approaches may affect strategic
planning because of misalignment between leaders’ and team-workers’ basic understanding of strategic development and its origin.