Search results

Presents the findings of a two‐year programme of questionnaire‐ and case study‐based research conducted during 1993‐1995. Argues that it is not enough for management to initiate problem solving, educate staff or attend quality steering committees in order to introduce quality initiatives successfully. Concludes that quality initiatives must be managed.

Analyses the growing wave of quality initiatives which have emerged within financial services since the mid 1980s, as revealed by a recent postal questionnaire survey. Identifies that while quality initiatives are extremely costly, they generate benefits such as increased staff awareness. Focuses on the recent trend within financial services towards business process re‐engineering (BPR) and argues that what BPR will mean in practice is far from clear in view of the divergent perceptions among practitioners as to what it is.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/09604520010318263. When citing the article, please cite: Darren McCabe, David Knights, (2000), “The human face of re-engineering in financial services”, Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 10 Iss: 2, pp. 74 - 78.

This paper aims to enhance understanding of organizational change by countering managerial and critical assumptions that it is possible to break with the past.

A qualitative, case study approach involving interviews with 50 staff, ten supervisors, eight deputy supervisors, four assistant managers, two departmental managers plus the IT, training and personnel managers. The paper focuses on the experiences of supervisors and deputy supervisors.

That culture cannot be so readily forgotten or reinvented as management gurus assume or critics fear. Memories are stubborn and culture is constituted through them in ways that lead to continuity and change.

Limitations leading to future research include that the study explores only one organization. Second, consultants are not used. Third, the reengineering only focus on a part of the organization. Fourth, the findings can be contrasted with an organization that is considered leading edge.

The qualitative findings provide a complex understanding of change especially in terms of how memory can serve to both facilitate and hinder change initiatives and how attempts to introduce more “informal” cultures simultaneously reproduce “formality”.

This article presents a research framework that understands any management innovation, such as total quality management (TQM), as discursive knowledge that can have certain power effects. It may transform individuals into subjects that secure some sense of their own meaning and identity through participating either as managers or employees in the practices the knowledge embraces. But TQM can also have the opposite effect, resulting in subjects resisting or distancing themselves from, rather than embracing, the discourse. The paper reviews three interpretations of TQM, which are described as rational managerialist, critical control, and processual. It critiques each of these approaches so as to offer an alternative way of understanding TQM, which would also have application to a wide variety of other innovations. In short, it attempts to build upon earlier approaches in the anticipation that we might move beyond our present understanding of innovations such as TQM.

Managers are increasingly using the term “business process re‐engineering” to rationalise and describe a variety of innovations, irrespective of their content. Programmes of re‐engineering have been designed simply as a means to cut costs; one of the major costs being that of people. The neglect of people in the design of re‐engineering programmes has resulted in “operational” managers being forced to address issues such as low staff morale, poor job satisfaction and high levels of stress after a new structure or system has been put in place. This has resulted in attempts to improve communication and promote a consultative and open style of management. Job rotation, enlargement and enrichment have also been targets for improvement, and a greater emphasis has been placed on teamworking. An emerging phenomenon, which we feel is conducive to teamworking, is that of management involving employees in a discussion of service quality and what it means to work in their respective organisations. Critically, following these discussions, management must attempt to address the issues raised by employees.

Argues that, in the world of financial services, many managers find the transition from traditionalist to team player a difficult challenge. Yet quality initiatives demand a team‐based approach, and managers need to do more than simply set up new structures, or flatten hierarchies, to initiate change. The threat to existing structures and styles of management has been researched through questionnaires, in‐depth case studies, and company visits, reaching the conclusion that although great strides have been made, much remains to be done.

Quality initiatives demand that management and staff share a mutual interest in improving the quality of customer service through continuous improvement. These demands are currently being pursued against a background of organizational restructuring, redundancy and pressures on staff to increase productivity that are inconsistent with promoting a shared interest in improving service quality. Argues that management needs to reflect on the consistency of its actions in relation to the underlying rational of quality initiatives.

Questions whether “quality” is having as much impact in the financial services sector as the evidence of use of quality management techniques in the UK suggests. Explores the context within which “quality” is finding a place in financial services, and presents the findings of a postal questionnaire survey concerned with the extent of usage and the nature of the quality initiatives in the financial services sector.

Explores the role of trade unions in relation to team working. Asks the questions: are unions incompatible with team working and what are the implications for shop stewards of team working? Argues that moves towards team working are likely to be fragile because of political and power‐based tensions, within and without the employment relationship, which impinge on trade union responses to team working, and likewise impact on management’s ability to adopt a sustained approach towards team working. Consequently, in contrast to its unitarist ethos, team working is characterized by resistance, conflict, accommodation and contradiction. This is an attempt to highlight the complex, temporal and contested nature of team working.