MGT603: Systems Thinking and Its Application to Issues of National Australia Bank Assessment Answer
Answer
Subject Code and Title: MGT603- Systems Thinking
Assessment Part A: Proposal Individual
Identified issue
Over 300 staffs have been fired from National Australia Bank (NAB) over the reports of ethical misconduct and wrongdoings. The CEO of the bank admitted that there were reports misconduct across the sector, which is the picture of greed-driven banking culture practised in the organisations. Earlier Andrew Thorburn (CEO of NAB) opposed commission of inquiry however admitted to being ashamed of that decision as clearly NAB’s staffs were not adhering to the bank’s code of conduct (Reuters, 2019).
Impact on stakeholders
The major consequences were faced by executive levels and NAB’s wealth management arm. Allegations suggested that NAB has charged hundreds and thousands for services to their clients that were never delivered. Many employees and executives were fired and still under investigations. The governing board of the bank is now arranging hundreds of millions of dollars for refunds, compliance changes and legal costs for various charges of misconduct brought up against the management and the staffs. The shareholders are affected by financial losses as the share prices dropped by 0.3 per cent. The clients are affected by the loss of services, loss of savings and harm of the bank’s reputation as a result of this public scandal (Reuters, 2019). Most of the stakeholders are affected negatively as a result of employee misconduct resulting in huge losses for the bank (Richardson& Garner, 2019).
Recommended policy/ procedure using System Thinking Tool
According to Iqbal, Khan, Bashir & Senin (2015), system thinking is an analysis approach of interrelating parts of a system in the context of a larger system. According to Batra, Kaushik & Kalia (2010), the importance of system thinking lies in its ability to solve complex problem. However, Wang, Liu & Mingers (2015) argued that system thinking is not only about problem solving in general means, but to innovate solutions in many ways to solve complex problems.
CATWOE: In order to recommend alternate policy or procedure as a solution, the in-depth understanding of the issue in hand is necessary for which CATWOE analysis has been chosen. The merit of this system thinking tool is that it analyses the issue from six different perspectives in order to produce a viable solution (Wang, Liu,&Mingers, 2015). This also forms the rationale for choosing this tool for analysing this issue. The following CATWOE diagram analyses the issue of wrongdoing by staffs at NAB.
Figure 1: CATWOE analysis of NAB Staff Wrongdoing Issues
Source: Created by author
The six perspectives in reference to the issue are detailed below. These are
- World view: Effects are long term and wide-reaching
- Owner: CEO of NAB
- Environmental Constraints: Economy and legal constraints
- Customers: charged for services but never provided with the desired services
- Actors: Employees, Executives
- Transformation process: Affected process are banking, service delivery
- A holistic approach: Refreshing the employee code of conduct outlining consequences for non-adherence.
The outcome of the CATWOE analysis suggests that the identified problem at NAB which is wrongdoing by employees had obvious results of employee turnover, the owner of the problem are CEO and he is responsible for implementing new policies and procedures for managing employee conduct at NAB. The holistic approach suggests a solution for developing new sets of organisational policies determining desired ethical conduct by employees while outlining the consequences of non-adherence to these policies. These policies should be communicated organisation-wide in order to improve internal functions. The perceived outcome of such a step is that employees are likely to engage in greed culture and cheat clients. The bank will be likely to improve its reputation and set an example of proper corporate governance.
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