Organisational Change and Retail Finance: An Ethnographic Perspective

by Harper,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415202640
• ISBN10: 0415202647
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-02-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Financial organizations, like many others, are undergoing radical change. This is affecting both their organizational processes and the technology that supports those processes. This book reports on the use of sociological ethnography in helping guide these changes, both in terms of helping better understand and redraw work processes and through providing more accurate and flexible understanding of he role technology plays. It places he reported research in context by contrasting it with those approaches more commonly associated with change, including business processes engineering, participative design and soft systems methodologies. The book explains what are the benefits of ethnography, as well as the potential it has in helping achieve more desirable change in any and all organizations, financial services included. The book will be of interest to all international researchers concersed with organizational and technological change, as well as managers of organizational development. It will alsointerest advanced students in sociology, anthropology, management science and organizational studies.

Author Biography

Dave Randall is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgements	xiii
Introduction	1	(20)
Preamble	1	(2)
Overview of the book	3	(3)
The view from sociology	6	(10)
Financial services and more engaged sociology: CSCW	13	(3)
Conclusion	16	(5)
PART I
Organisational studies and empirical description	21	(21)
Introduction	21	(2)
Organisational studies	23	(12)
Functionalism and the creation of typologies	25	(3)
Other forms of functionalism	28	(3)
Functionalism, psychology and organisational behaviour	31	(2)
A sociological response	33	(2)
Revisiting the auspices of organisational studies	35	(5)
Sense-making in organisations	37	(3)
Conclusion	40	(2)
Approaches to the management of change	42	(20)
Introduction	42	(2)
Approaches to change	44	(10)
Business Process Re-engineering	44	(5)
Participative Design	49	(3)
Soft Systems Methodology	52	(2)
Conclusion: The productivity paradox	54	(8)
Assessing management of change and technology-design perspectives	56	(6)
Ethnography and change	62	(19)
Introduction	62	(1)
What is ethnography?	63	(8)
What is involved in `doing' ethnography	65	(2)
Ethnomethodologically informed ethnography	67	(2)
Relative merits of the approach	69	(2)
Conclusion	71	(10)
Some problems of ethnography	76	(5)
PART II
Taking customers seriously	81	(26)
Introduction	81	(1)
`Telling' and `selling'--customer confidence and demeanour-work	82	(12)
The confident customer	84	(4)
Knowledge in action	88	(2)
Visible competence	90	(1)
The satisfied customer and everyday tasks	91	(2)
Breaking the rules	93	(1)
Making sense of the customer: Interviews and local knowledge	94	(10)
Visible competence and interviewing	98	(4)
Back office work	102	(2)
Conclusion	104	(3)
The virtual customer	107	(19)
Introduction	107	(1)
Cooperating with the customer	108	(7)
Local knowledge and the `customer in the machine'	110	(3)
Demeanour-work and the `customer in the machine'	113	(1)
Identifying `difficult customers' in the machine	114	(1)
More than a number: Relationship management and the customer in the machine	115	(8)
Managing change	117	(2)
Reconfiguring the borrower	119	(4)
Conclusion	123	(3)
Taking technology seriously	126	(24)
Introduction	126	(2)
Technology inside banks	128	(17)
Accounts in trouble	129	(3)
Decision-making applications and `accounts in trouble'	132	(2)
Advanced technologies and practical actions	134	(8)
Management Information Systems	142	(3)
Banking on the old technology: `Legacy' systems in use	145	(3)
Old systems and ordinary work	146	(2)
Conclusion	148	(2)
Conclusion	150	(15)
Introduction	150	(8)
A post-disciplinary approach to empirical research	151	(7)
Placing a post-disciplinary approach to ethnography within a spectrum of techniques	158	(1)
Conclusion	158	(7)
The analytic foci of a post-disciplinary approach	159	(6)
References	165	(14)
Index	179