National Australia Bank: Cultural Change Program - Case Study Example

National Australia Bank: Cultural Change Program Student's Name Institution's Name Date Strength and Weakness of Each Culture Old Culture The old culture was a profit driven culture which was characterized by excess risk taking behaviors, and sacrificing ethical behaviors to make profits. Other major weaknesses include lack of accountability, distrust, lack of team work, inability to allow different ideas or perspectives, and lacked responsibilities. The culture was also characterized by poor governance as a result of lack of operations transparency and responsibility. Another problem included employees' negligence and lack of a sense of ownership such that the employees acted as if they were not part of the company. The only strength in this culture was that the company worked to ensure maximum profit by lowering the operation cost. A profit driven company seeks to generate organization wealth before considering anything else. It normally evaluates potential services, products, and market to recognize the most profitable avenues. These avenues are followed without caring about other organization aspects as long as the company manages a profit that meets the organization projection. One of strength of a profit driven culture is that it focuses more on reducing the cost of operation and thus maximizing the organization's profit. This kind of culture has a number of weaknesses which include that an organization is more likely to lower the product or service quality when trying to reduce the operation cost. Another weakness is that, in an effort to minimize cost, the culture concentrate more on workers ability to reduce the operation cost, than on how improve their services to attract more customers. Any new strategy that can be employed to better the organization operation focuses on the cost first before anything else. Another weakness of this culture is that leaders may be tempted to employ unethical measures just to make profit. The dysfunction management systems results to lack of workers and the management attachment to the company. Workers are not given an opportunity to express their views and ideas regarding the organization management. This makes them feel less important and as a result, they tend to be less concerned about the organization welfare. This makes them fail in making any effort to enhance the organization operations. Lack of transparency and accountability reduces the desire to ensure accuracy and effectiveness in the company. It also promotes distrust as most workers will be involved in financial manipulation process and be expected to remain quiet. Therefore, communication and information sharing becomes a problem in the company. This kills the spirit of teamwork as every worker tends to be silent about the unethical acts in the company. The company's board of directors also refuse to take charge and follow up on the organization performance and operations. This makes it easy for other leaders to manipulate the financial figures without fear, for there is no accountability required. The old culture can be described as dysfunctional system without order or direction. It was highly characterized by selfish individuals whose interests were more personal based than organizational based (Shahzad et al., 2012). New Culture The new culture is client based, which is characterized by a number of strengths that included investing in reputation, culture and people. To achieve this organization prioritized on integrated the three identified aspects in strategic objectives, vision and mission statement of the company. A good reputation is very essential in marketing. A brand sells more when the company associated with it has a good reputation. The culture also promoted transparency and collaboration. The two are very essential in enhancing company's performance. Transparency promotes investors trust and thus, playing a role in attracting more investors into the company. Collaboration promotes accountability and sharing of ideas. This enhances the organization performance and competitiveness in the market (Madu, n.d.). The new culture clearly denounced the old dysfunctional culture by launching of a new company logo. It was a way of welcoming the public who were disappointed by the previous management to try the company again as if it was a new organization without previous history.  Force Field Analysis Using Kurt Lewin's Change Management Model Based on the Kurt Lewin's change model, the company has both change driving forces and change restraining forces. The driving forces include need for collaboration, transparency, building the organization reputation, and embracing a client based culture (Change management Coach, 2015). The restraining forces include previous financial scandals, workers negligence, lack of team work, distrust among workers, and poor financial status. This is illustrated below: The company aims at enhancing its operation and profitability. This according to the new management can only be enhanced by changing the organization culture. Based on the evaluation, the restricting factors are more than the driving factor. Therefore, the company must develop a way to suppress the restricting forces and promote the driving forces. Most of the restricting forces are highly related with employees' behavior and attitude. Aspects such as lack of team work, distrust and workers negligence can be enhanced by effecting human resource management in the company. This will ensure that there is more commitment, accountability, communication, and promotion of teamwork. The company can easily manage the employees since the previous management has been dismissed and thus, there will be no negative influence in the organization any more. Effective human resource management will assist in promoting collaboration between the management and the workers. The financial scandal incident affected the reputation of the company. This resulted to lose of customers and distrust among the customers and investors. This eventually led to decrease in the organization market share and competitive advantage. Wining customers and investors trust will be among the biggest challenges the new management will experience. However, the new management desire to restore the company's reputation may assist in overcoming this problem. The launching of a new company logo in a public event acted as an announcement that the company has a new face with a new management, which is willing to work with the public. Moreover, the embracement of transparency which is symbolized by big glass windows is a clear indication that the company is ready to fight fraud and other unethical practices that were previously experienced. This can highly assist in winning the customers trust. The employment of a client based culture gives customers a higher place in the organization. With this culture, clients will feel more valued in the company. They will also enable customer to enjoy more benefits from the company than they used to before. This is a strategy that can easily assist in breaking the distrust notion created by the previous management. It is therefore expected that the company will manage to regain its position in the market with time. The hardest restricting force that the company has to overcome is the poor financial status. NAB registered huge losses after the 2004 financial incident. The new management will have to find a way to operate in the current situation and to overcome it to be able to regain its position in the market. This way, the company will manage to overcome the current financial condition and effectively achieve its goal of making profit by implementing new organization culture. NAB Cultural Change Perspective Adopted in the Change Program The NAB adopted functionalist perspective of cultural change program. Functionalistic view involves a shared norms, values and assumptions. Its change process punctuate stability as a fundamental process of conversing to a novel culture and undermining the old one. This is because, the cultural change in the organization was not gradual but it was done drastically. The NAB cultural change was immediately implemented after the absorption of the new management. This was done with intention of disintegrating the original culture, which was considered bad, and embracing the new culture. The entire process was based on the assumption that the change of the organization culture and norms would be the only way to solve the problem the organization was experiencing (Sage, 2007). The NAB new management perceives culture as a determinant of the organization performance. They associated a bad culture with poor and unethical operations and thus, relating it to losses that the company experienced in 2004. In this regard, the new management perceived good culture as a tool to enhance the organization performance and also as a tool to rebuild the organization relation to the public. The change of the organization culture was therefore perceived as a way to rebuild the organization reputation, as away to assist the company to regain the public trust and thus, as a way to enhance the company profitability. In addition, the change of organization culture was regarded as the only way to enhance the internal performance and the operation of workers. The change of culture was expected to enhance team work, trust, communication, work efficiency, accountability, and responsibility and promote ethical behaviors in an organization. In this regard, there was an urgent need to destroy the old culture and to introduce a new culture in a manner that the old culture does not whatsoever influence the new one. This kind of change can only be managed in functionalistic perspective of culture change in an organization. Future Recommendation for NAB CEO or HR Team My future recommendation to the HR team of the NAB is that organization culture plays a major role in determining the kind of workforce organization nurtures. When the culture has ethical loopholes, the workforce sees it and takes advantage of it just as the management team. However, when an organization culture promotes ethical aspects, the workforce tends to obey as a way to avoid the consequences of breaking the rules. Therefore, the culture defined by an organization should clearly enhance good ethical principles which act as a guidance to employees' behaviors in an organization. Beside this, an organization should consider integrating workers motivation techniques in their culture. Workers serve as the main asset in any organization, particularly a service rendering institution like the NAB. Their motivation would easily enhance their quality of service, their loyalty to the company, their attachment with the company, and their desire to apply their innovative ideas to benefit the company. In this regard, workers should not just be treated as paid personnel, but as organization assets. They should be trained, rewarded, and integrated in the decision making process. This will assist in enhancing the performance of the organization and hence, its profitability in the future (Storey, 2001).  References Change Management Coach (2015). Force field analysis - Kurt Lewin. Retrieved from Madu, B. C. (n.d.). Organization culture as driver of competitive advantage. Journal of Academic and Business Ethics, 1-9. Retrieved from < http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/11791.pdf> Sage. (2007). The cultural approach chapter 5 . Sage Publication. Retrieved from Shahzad, F., Luqman, R. A., Khan, A. R., & Sgabbir, L. (2012). Impact of organization culture on organization performance. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 3(9), 977-985. Storey, J. (2001). Human resource management: A critical text. Belmont: Thomson. Read More