Theories of Organisational Behaviour Have No Relevance for the Modern Manager

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3.0 Discuss Tannenbaum and Schmidt ‘continuum of leadership styles’

Tannenbaum and Schmidt concentrated more on delegation & freedom in decision making to subordinates and there by on the team development. As the team’s freedom increases, the manager’s authority decreases. This is a positive way for both teams and managers to develop. We already dealt delegating in a different blog post.

.information technology

Information technology has impacted on the financial services sector in avariety of different ways and this emphasizes again the way in which the dynamism and development of companies in financial services make the sector a good model to use for studying business management. Information technology has had an enormous impact on operations within financial services, enabling modification and development of products and services offered and linking together financial centres across wide geographical areas into a global financial community. A particular impact has been that it has enabled companies to reduce their cost base, giving them opportunities to improve profitability in an extremely competitive environment. This can be done by a pure reduction in the overhead or by passing on cost savings to customers through lower prices, thereby gaining a competitive edge. IT has reduced costs in various ways in the financial services sector.It has reduced the number of staff required to carry out back-office work by pulling the tasks out of branch network and transferring it to service or call centres. The vast majority of paper has been taken out of money transmission by systems already mentioned, like EFTPOS and BACS. You no longer need to have a network of branches to enter or stay in the sector because you can offer services without it through home banking and telephone banking.These reduced barriers to entry based on IT have allowed many new players into the financial services market place, such as Mark & Spencer; companies which have not traditionally been part of the financial services industry.

As well as reducing or minimising costs, IT has helped companies with product development through enhancement of existing services, creation of new services and contributions to product differentiation, that is making products seem different from and superior to those of your competitors. This can be demonstrated clearly in the following product developments:

Cashless forms of payment

Simplification of the process of buying and selling shares

Home and telephone banking

ATMs

Insurance by phone

There are many ways in which it is of benefit to customers:

Services are available 24 hours a day, 7days a week

The organization’s web site can be accessed from the customer’s home or workplace or from anywhere they have access to the internet

There is no need to incur the time and effort involved in visiting the business’s offices

Processing times are faster

Another option is available in terms of channel and, consequently, choice is increased

As costs to the business are lower, the fees charged to the customer can also be commensurately lower

Detailed information is available and comparison can be made across providers either by the customer themselves or through use of the many sites which provide comparative information.

The new products and services which are aided by IT are very attractive and convenient and that must be a benefit to the customer. Information technology, through services such as the ATM and telephone delivery systems has had a very positive impact on customer service. Customers have much more choice in terms of when and how they access organizations along with the opportunity to access these organizations on a 24/7 basis. For example, the online banking is so popular in modern; due to there are many advantages for customers. It is so convenient, direct banks are open for business anywhere there is an internet connection and they are open 24 hours a day. Online accounts are easy to set up and require no more information than a traditional bank account. There are areas of concern with the internet and there are still issues with many consumers in relation to security and privacy. The European Banker stated that financial customers’ deep-seated security fears remain one of the biggest obstacles to the take-up of online banking services’. White and Nteli (2004) also identified continuing customer fears about security and concluded that, despite advances to improve that security, it still remained the key concern for customers in using internet banking in the UK.

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