An implementation model for strategic organizational change in Ethiopian commercial banks

Abstract

The issue of successful implementation of strategic organizational change is not sufficiently addressed in the literature of organizational change even though there is unanimity in reporting a high rate of failure. Moreover, attempts to provide supportive guidelines that enhance implementation success are meager and their validity in nonwestern contexts is disputed. Thus, the present study tried to address the question of how a strategic organizational change can be successfully implemented by developing an implementation model within the context of Ethiopian commercial banks. In Ethiopia, commercial banking is exclusively reserved for nationals. This makes the setting a typical national context from where two commercial banks were included in the present study through maintaining maximum variation in ownership structure. Embedded in each bank, cases of teams which were established to redesign a specific type of business process were identified to theoretically sample participants for the indepth interviews. Applying an inductive multiple case study strategy, a combination of within-case and cross-case analyses were employed with the support of the ATLAS.ti software. As a result, theoretical propositions were made and an implementation model for strategic organizational change was developed by taking the context of commercial banks in Ethiopia into consideration. The findings indicate that national and organizational contexts demand contextualized approaches to implement strategic organizational change. Although several concepts which are documented in the extant literature were confirmed, original propositions are also made by the present study. A triple helix of initiating, designing, and implementing were emerged as inseparable components of the proposed implementation model for strategic organizational change in a context where cognitive and technical readiness is ensured.