Title: An investigation on the innovation and managerial leadership capabilities of the Wong Tai Sin Branch of the Lion Bank: a mixed methods research
Project Background:
Rationale for selection – importance and potential impact of the strategic project for an
organisation or business sector. Word Guide approximately 500.
The project examines the Wong Tai Sin (WTS) Branch of the Lion Bank, which is a subsidiary of the CG Banking Group. It offers retail banking services to the residents in WTS. The external environment facing the WTS Branch is tough due to intense competition from other banks in WTS, notably the Dong Ar Bank and the Seedy Bank. Banking customers are getting more demanding. Internally, WTS Branch staff are in low morale as their salaries have been cut by 20% and the weak ability of the Branch management team on innovation management. The WTS computer system is also quite unreliable due to poor system maintenance. Most of the managers in the WTS Branch are in the late 60s, thus taking a very relaxed management style. Together, all these related issues constitute a highly problematic project background of the dissertation project described here. As a deputy branch manager of the WTS Branch, this student takes up the dissertation project to study two main management concerns of the WTS Branch. These are: (i) weak innovation capability of the WTS branch and (ii) weak managerial leadership competence of the WTS Branch. These two main management concerns severely affect the ability of the WTS to compete in the WTS district and the job security of the WTS Branch staff, including that of this student. They can be considered as the chosen strategic issues (i.e. main management concerns) of the WTS Branch to be investigated here. Being the deputy branch manager of the WTS Branch makes the conduct of this dissertation project feasible by this student.
Mirroring these two management concerns, the two main research objectives of this dissertation project are:
Objective 1: to evaluate the innovation capability of the WTS Branch
Objective 2: to evaluate the managerial leadership competence of the WTS Branch.
Meeting these two objectives enables this student to come up with useful ideas to cope with these management concerns as well as to improve the managerial competence of the student as a deputy branch manager of the WTS Branch. Meeting these two objectives thus have high practical value. At the same time, using relevant academic ideas to address these management concerns contributes to the intellectual knowledge on the academic ideas employed in this dissertation project; thus, this dissertation project also has some academic value.
Literature Review:
Identification of the key aspects of the business literature (e.g service quality) to be underpin the
study. This review should briefly cover the main ideas and business practice that will be
considered. It should locate a sample of the some of the main sources and identify key critical
issues that might arise. – Word Guide approximately 750.
Literature review is to be carried out to support an effective intellectual response to the management concerns identified for the dissertation project work. Useful academic ideas are introduced here in terms of how they are related to the main and secondary objectives of this dissertation projects. Literature sources are mainly from the University library and Google Scholar.
Objectives:
Identify 3-4 objective outcomes from the dissertation in terms of what the dissertation seeks to
achieve for the organisation or business sector. These objectives should reflect outputs not
tasks to be completed and should emphasise the areas for improvement to business
performance the dissertation will concentrate on.
Objective 1: to evaluate the innovation capability of the WTS Branch of the Lion Bank
The innovation capability model of M. Jackson (2010) and the super innovation capability model of M. Jordan (2013) are highly relevant for innovation capability evaluation. They are to be used to inform the research task for objective 1. Other supportive theories include the wonderful approach of U. Bolt and the brilliant framework of Elton John, which are bank specific theories on innovation management.
Objective 2: to evaluate the managerial leadership competence of WTS Branch of the Lion Bank
The leadership evaluation model of Victor Li (2015) and the management evaluation model of Richard Li (2016) are to be employed together to assess the managerial leadership competence of the WTS Branch. The investigation will also be informed by the Happy Birthday approach of Billy Jean (2006) which is sophisticated in examining bank manager leadership style and the All Round model of Carrie Lai (2010) which specializes in evaluating managerial styles in the banking sector.
A secondary objective (objective 3) is to evaluate banking customer service expectation of banking service. This objective is able to shed light on understanding objectives 1 and 2. For that, the student finds the Merry Christmas model of J.K.K. Ho (2003) and the Wonderful model of Peter Pan (2005) highly relevant for evaluating customer service expectation in the banking sector.
More academic ideas are to be considered to inform the research tasks for the three research objectives in due course. Many of the academic ideas come from the European Journal of Innovation Management (Emerald) and the Asian Journal of Managerial Leadership (Wiley).
The overall literature review strategy follows the agile literature review approach of Ho (2018), which is management-concerns-driven with a specific core-focus-domain. In this case, the core-focus-domain comprises the two main dissertation project objectives; thus they, together, also constitute the prime agenda to do the literature review in this project.
Methodology:
Candidates should include a brief statement as to what they consider the main methods of
primary and secondary research are likely to be the most useful to achieving the project
outcomes – Approximately 300 words.
Objective 1: to evaluate the innovation capability of the WTS Branch of the Lion Bank: the student is going to employ semi-structured interviews to the senior and middle management of the WTS Branch as well as participant observation at the WTS Branch to gauge the innovation capability of the WTS Branch. These primary research methods are informed by the relevant academic literature as well as some secondary research method, notably document study on the WTS Branch management reports over the last 2 years on the topic of innovation capability.
Objective 2: to evaluate the managerial leadership competence of WTS Branch of the Lion Bank: the student will conduct participant observation and semi-structured interview, as the main primary research methods, to the middle management and operational staff to evaluate the managerial leadership competence of the WTS Branch. It is also to be supplemented with secondary research method of document study on the performance appraisal records of all the managerial staff at the WTS Branch over the last 3 years.
Objective 3: to evaluate banking customer service expectation of banking service: the student is going to conduct online questionnaire survey with friends on his Facebook to understand banking customer service expectation of banking service, notably in the WTS district. The main online survey tool to use is the one offered by kwiksurveys.com, which is free-of-charge. The data gathered from this survey tool can be exported to MS Excel for further data analysis, notably with the Excel pivot table function for multi-dimensional data analysis (Ho, 2011). It would then be followed up by a few semi-structured interview with bank customers in the WTS district to gain a deeper understanding of their service quality expectation. This will enable the student to develop a deeper understanding of the questionnaire survey findings.
A more elaborate research strategy will be formulated in due course. Overall, the research strategy can be described as a mixed methods research (Jones, 2011) as well as a case study research (Yin, 2000). The research strategy is to be explicitly driven by a theoretical framework that synthesized academic ideas gathered via literature review. Data analysis include Excel-pivot table based analysis on the questionnaire survey data (re: for objective 3) [i.e. quantitative data analysis] and theory-driven analysis on the qualitative data, primarily from interview research (re: objectives 1 and 2) [i.e. qualitative data analysis]. The subsequent analysis of research findings will employ both inductive and deductive reasoning (Hui, 2005). The research findings are then utilized to justify recommendations to the management to cope with the identified management concerns at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. This student will ensure that sensitive and confidential information of the WTS Branch of the Lion Bank, e.g., sensitive management accounting information, is not to be disclosed in the dissertation report without the consent of the top management of the WTS Branch of the Lion Bank.
The overall literature review and research methods approach follows the guidelines from the agile literature review approach of J.K.K. Ho (2018) which is highly relevant for dissertation project of the applied business research type. This is exactly the nature of this student's dissertation project.
Writing up the project background chapter 3 weeks Computer and reference books
Writing up the literature review chapter 7 weeks Computer, reference books, supervisor support
Writing up the research methods chapter 3 weeks Survey software, and computer
Writing up the findings and analysis chapter 3 weeks Computer tools, e,g. winword and Excel
Writing up the Conclusions chapter 2 weeks Computer tool, primarily winword
Writing up the Recommendation chapter 1 week Computer tool, primarily winword
Writing up the Personal development chapter 1 week Computer tool, primarily winword
References
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