Time: 1.30 - 2.30pm
Speaker: Daniel Beunza (Cass Business School)
Seminar Title: Purpose-built: Integrating meaning and technology in a bank's recovery from 9/11
Abstract: The unexpected ability of banks and markets to continue operating through the COVID-19 crisis has sparked renewed interest in the role of technology in organizational resilience. Existing organizational studies, however, have emphasized the role of compassion, sensemaking and managerial narratives, but have largely neglected integrating technology in them. Based on an ethnographic revisit of a Wall Street bank’s response to 9/11, we propose an integrative model of organizational recovery as the iterative restoration of meaning and technology in ways that support each other. Our process model offers guidelines for managers leading banks and financial institutions towards a "new normal." First, a resilient response entails updating recovery narratives, from alleviating employee distress, to rebuilding operational capacity, to creating a compelling direction for the organization. Second, shaping the organization's long-term future requires managers to integrate the structural effects of new technology in their plans, including its mediating effect on roles and scripts. Third, recovery reopens political debates in the organization, and managers can shape their outcome through the timing of their decisions.
This event is by invitation only.
