<p> As the need for cost-efficient, talented teams continues to grow, leaders often consider the use of globally dispersed teams, also defined as virtual teams. Despite the apparent benefits, the unique needs of virtual team members are often overlooked in general leadership, change management, and retention discussions. Leaders need to understand contributing factors to the attrition of virtual workers. The foundation for this research included theories of employee retention and change management. The research question for this qualitative phenomenological study focused on the lived experiences of current or former virtual financial services workers regarding job retention. Participants were chosen using purposeful sampling resulting in the selection of 15 individuals who had worked on a virtual financial services team within the past 3 years. The researcher used open-ended interview questions to report the lived experiences of virtual team members related to attrition, retention, and change. The researcher used the phenomenological descriptive approach for the analysis. A combination of hand coding and coding software revealed recurring themes. Themes from the results of the study included challenges of the virtual environment, leadership improvements, productivity impacts resulting from disengagement of the leader, and improvement of communication strategies. Suggestions for further research include frequency of communication, leadership training, team member selection, and further theory development for virtual leaders. The impact to positive social change occurs when virtual workers are satisfied in their role, thus impacting their ability to provide for their family, engage more frequently in activities within their community, and contribute to the success of the company.</p><p>

The strategic management literature draws attention to the importance of congruence between strategy, technology strategy and structure, and the potential for disjuncture. Bearing this in mind, we developed a cross-national, exploratory, institutional study of the retail banking industry, focusing specifically on information technology implementation at the unit level. The study employs a dual methodological focus at two levels of analysis, with extensive, semi-structured interviews at the corporate and regional level, followed by a questionnaire at the unit, branch manager level. A response rate of 81% seems to imply a concern for the timeliness of the research. In both Canada and the U.S.A., governmental deregulation and widespread technological developments have resulted in increased competition and restructuring of the industry. Against this backdrop of turbulence, information technology has the potential to change significantly the decision-making structure of the branch system. The most striking difference between the banking systems of the U.S.A. and Canada are the disproportionate number of branch units per bank, approximately 1:10. In some important aspects, decision-making in the Canadian bank is decentralized to the branch manager level, while in the U.S.A. bank decision-making is centralized to the regional level. The study concludes that the strength of the Canadian bank rests on its extensive, decentralized branch network. Conversely in the U.S.A., the bank is restricted in its expansion by the lack of decision-making at the branch level. Arguably, technology can be used to centralize or decentralize decision-making, constrained by existing structure and technological capability. In both countries the technology strategy is somewhat incompatible with structure. Constrained by industry structure, both banks espouse different strategies, and have dissimilar structures. Competitive strategy, in Porter's terms, is shown to be inappropriate, with both banks seeking to maximize cost efficiency, and simultaneously develop differentiation.

<p> Over the past 35 years, Great Depression era regulatory restrictions on the geographic area of operation and the scope of financial services banks can offer have change significantly. These changes fueled a surge of merger activity and resulted in a 70% decrease in the number of bank charters by 2015. Currently, community banks hold only 14% of bank assets in the US; nonetheless, they play an important role in the US economy because they continue to provide the majority of funding to small businesses. This study finds that over 83% of bank failures occurred in metropolitan areas despite the distribution of community banks being almost equal at 49.5% rural and 50.5% metropolitan. An analysis of FDIC data from 2000 through 2014 indicates that rural and community banks do differ significantly on variables related to bank profitability and loan portfolio risk. Metropolitan banks have lower ratios on pre-tax return on assets, and return on equity. On average, metropolitan banks are approximately 30% less profitable than their rural counterparts. Since the 2007 financial crisis, on average, metropolitan banks have higher ratios on variables related to loan portfolio risk and since 2010 they have lower capital to asset ratios. The higher bank failure rates, riskier loan portfolios, and lower capital to asset ratios associated with metropolitan community banks provides support for the competition-fragility view that increased competition in banking leads to more bank failures. The nationwide survey in this study indicates that metropolitan community bankers perceive the competitive environment to be more intense and that their marketing capabilities are inferior to the large nationwide and regional banks that they compete against. Community bankers perceive that the merger and acquisition activity will continue and that it is driven by the need to achieve economies of scale in technology and regulatory compliance. Based on previous research that larger banks extend less credit to small businesses, this will further restrict the availability of bank credit to new businesses and existing microenterprises. Given that microenterprises employ the majority of people and contribute to new job creation, there are serious economic implications.</p>

<p> A study on corporate leadership failure in America by Vugt and Ronay has shown that the failure rate of business leadership in meeting profitability targets is as high as 60%. Most organizations fail to attain profitability targets due to limited experience and exposure to strategic leadership. The aim of this single case study design was to explore the role of strategic leadership in banking profitability. Twelve purposively selected senior bankers and members of the board of directors with over 10 years of experience in banking and profitability and 3 years in the top management team participated in the study in western Tanzania. The resource-based view framed the discussion regarding strategic leadership skills needed to enhance banking profitability. Data were collected through semistructured interviews using open-ended questions to elicit in-depth responses from the participants. Other data sources included social media, company websites, and annual reports. The modified van Kaam approach was used in the data analysis. Meaningful statements were grouped into larger units to form themes. Findings confirmed that strategic leadership skills development had an important influence on banking profitability. Five themes emerged from the study results including strategic leadership and organization performance, planning, risk management, training and skills development, and the unique resources. Findings may also help to improve banking profitability, create employment, and contribute to social change to the poor and unbanked communities in Tanzania.</p>

<p> A study on corporate leadership failure in America by Vugt and Ronay has shown that the failure rate of business leadership in meeting profitability targets is as high as 60%. Most organizations fail to attain profitability targets due to limited experience and exposure to strategic leadership. The aim of this single case study design was to explore the role of strategic leadership in banking profitability. Twelve purposively selected senior bankers and members of the board of directors with over 10 years of experience in banking and profitability and 3 years in the top management team participated in the study in western Tanzania. The resource-based view framed the discussion regarding strategic leadership skills needed to enhance banking profitability. Data were collected through semistructured interviews using open-ended questions to elicit in-depth responses from the participants. Other data sources included social media, company websites, and annual reports. The modified van Kaam approach was used in the data analysis. Meaningful statements were grouped into larger units to form themes. Findings confirmed that strategic leadership skills development had an important influence on banking profitability. Five themes emerged from the study results including strategic leadership and organization performance, planning, risk management, training and skills development, and the unique resources. Findings may also help to improve banking profitability, create employment, and contribute to social change to the poor and unbanked communities in Tanzania.</p>

<p>Abstract The topic for this study was the phenomenon of income smoothing as a strategy for earnings management in banks and financial institutions. The general problem of the study was that income smoothing was a form of earnings manipulation and could lead to fraud. Moreover, the specific problem was that it was unknown how the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), in its ushering of higher financial reporting quality, could influence the level of remediation and accounting practice among financial institutions and banks; having said that, there was yet to be a formal attempt at quantifying and understanding how the IFRS and the practices it ushered in could regulate income smoothing and earnings management among financial and banking institutions, as well as its effect on the quality of financial statements presented by such firms. To address this problem, the purpose of this study was to explore how the IFRS, in its ushering of higher financial reporting quality, could influence the level of remediation and accounting practices among financial institutions and banks. In line with the problem and purpose of the study, a correlational quantitative study was the research design used. Data were gathered from banks or financial institutions listed in the NYSE since 2000. Multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the data gathered. The results of the regression analysis supported the alternative hypothesis that earnings from tangible assets categorized as plant and equipment used for production in the year of investigation as influenced by the IFRS significantly influence in minimizing the rate to which firms? engage in earnings management. This research provides understanding into how earnings management has collaboratively influenced the reported financials of the 100 NYSE-listed companies that partook in this study.

This study traces the patterns of competition, strategic orientations, and the differential risk/return profiles associated with various business strategies in the banking industry. It addresses the unresolved questions of strategic groups existence, stability, and performance effects by examining two contrasting models of strategic group formation/identification. It extends the literature conceptually by proposing that strategic groups be identified using firm resource bundles/capabilities in addition to observed product market strategies. Further, it tests an expanded model of strategy-performance linkage, and draws several empirical implications for the resource based view. In the longitudinal facet, using data from the Bank Compustat database, eleven scope and resource deployment variables were employed to identify strategic groups at the corporate strategy level, using a two stage clustering algorithm, over a fifteen year period (1974-1988). The impact of discontinuous environmental change such as deregulation on strategic group dynamics and firm level risk-return relationship was examined. In addition, performance and risk differences both across and within groups were investigated. In the cross-sectional facet, scores obtained from an expert panel of leading bank analysts on ten key resources during semi-structured interviews, were used to identify strategic groups. The study found that strategic groups characterized competition in the banking industry both before and after deregulation. Some support was found for the underlying stability of the strategic groups, despite the profound changes characterizing the banking industry. Environmental discontinuity was found to enhance inter-group mobility and strengthen the negative risk-return relationship prevalent in this industry. Across-group performance differences were found on economic and risk dimensions, but not on risk-adjusted dimensions except in the last time period. Within-group performance differences were found, but risk differences within groups existed in only 45% of the tests. A model of firm performance which included strategic group membership along with firm resources was found to have a significantly greater explanatory power than a model which omitted firm resources. Finally, resource based groupings appeared to be a empirically viable representation of industry rivalry and these groups were meaningful predictors of economic performance.

Worldwide, the idea of "person-less" banks, and full-service (financial services) institutions which compete with "non-bank" financial services organizations, are becoming the new way of doing business. To meet global competition, the Canadian Financial Services Industry has a need to conduct research into how to design their delivery of services by the most efficient and effective means. Specifically, there is a need to develop and position the operating structure of the institution to best respond to the market place, while meeting internal operational performance goals. Accordingly, a fundamental restructuring and reengineering is occurring within a large Canadian Bank. A major objective of this transformation is to provide more convenient and efficient platforms to the customer for performing transactions. This dissertation is directed at evaluating branch bank performance as a means of identifying best practice. Methods are developed to (1) study the performance of traditional bank branches. This activity involves the development of models characterizing both operational and sales performance, and attempts to uncover sources of inefficiency existing within the present structure; (2) provide tools for evaluating branches under the new structure. This effort will allow banks to examine reengineering options, and facilitate the development of a best strategic option for the organization with regard to branch make up; and (3) branch merger. More generally, the result will aid the Canadian Financial Service Industry in undertaking restructuring and reengineering efforts that are now occurring.

This is an exploratory study into the role commercial banks play in triggering recognition of failure in a declining firm and the nature of the bank's responses. Management literature has excluded important issues in the critical phase intervening decline and turnaround such as how the recognition of failure takes place, and the possible external influences on the turnaround strategy. Commercial banks being an influential external agency are ideally placed to perform this role. The study covered four banks in Canada and six banks in the US. The data collection comprised of qualitative sources (27 in-depth interviews with bank officers) and quantitative sources (questionnaire to loan officers seeking information pertaining to specific problem loan firms). Information on 34 cases in the US and 146 in Canada was obtained. The quantitative data was studied using correlational analysis, factor analysis, and a multiple regression model to help explain the bank's response strategies. The study shows that acting out of self-interest, the banks are a source of triggering early recognition of failure in the firms and attempt to distinguish between decline in performance and impending failure. The variables explaining the response strategy of the bank include: the causes (internal/external) for decline, extent of security coverage, severity of the decline, the extent of cooperation with the bank, size, and the bank's judgement on the ability of the firm to turnaround. The bank's response should be considered at two levels: the initial efforts of the loan officer and the subsequent institutional response of the bank. While there were only a few major differences between US and Canadian banks on several aspects of recognition and response, they exhibited different correlation structures. While both US and Canadian officers preferred a workout to an exit strategy, the US officers had a bias towards a financial approach including additional financial coverage, and the Canadian officers showed a managerial approach including managerial changes. From the perspective of strategic management, this study shows the importance of a source outside the firm in triggering recognition of failure and its influence on the turnaround strategy of the firm.

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