Knowledge Management in the Banking Sector of the UK - Case Study Example

Knowledge management in the banking sector of U.K. – an application of qualitative research method Introduction Financial institutions form a crucial pillar of any economy. Over all economic performance of a country to a large extent depends on the performance of its financial sectors. Hence, financial institutions need to operate quite efficiently in order to ensure high level of performance by the financial sector of a country. In the financial sector of any economy the banking industry is the most crucial financial institution. The banking industry of U.K. is a well performing sector of the U.K. economy. It heavily relies on knowledge workers in order to ensure efficient delivery of its services it its clients. Although financial institutions are immensely crucial to the U.K. economy and the importance of knowledge management is increasingly being recognized across different sectors of the economy, there has not been a sufficient amount of research on knowledge management in financial organizations of the United Kingdom. Among several financial institutions, banks are the most important ones and the prevailing environment in the banking sector of the United Kingdom also seems to be conducive for effective implementation of knowledge management. Hence, it would be quite interesting to examine the existing knowledge management system in the U.K. banking industry. It is now widely believed that an organization which is capable of leveraging its knowledge asset in a very systematic way can easily create as well as sustain a competitive advantage in such a way that it will be quite able to meet its current as well as future demands with greater efficiency. (Stuart, 1997; Snyman and Kruger, 2002; Malhotra, 1998). But knowledge management is not an easy task at the hand of an organization. On many occasions, it is found that banks fail to use its knowledge resources on account of having inefficient knowledge management strategies. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the importance of having a proper knowledge management strategy in order to ensure the success of the banks in their operations. (Ormerod and Aitken, 2004) In order to find out how the U.K. banking sector manages its knowledge asset, an extensive research needs to be carried out. However, the main problem with carrying out such research is that secondary data are not readily available to examine knowledge management strategies of the U.K. banks. The following section of this paper will therefore discuss the research method that would appropriate for examining knowledge management in U.K. banking sector. Research Methodology Given the objective of the study, this research needs to evaluate the existing system of knowledge management of U.K. banks and the performance of these banks in terms of efficient utilisation of knowledge resources by employing their existing knowledge management strategies. In order to obtain a clear view of the issue under consideration an appropriate research method should be employed. Research techniques are basically of two types – quantitative and qualitative. These two processes can also be combined to give the ‘mixed-method’ approach. Qualitative research technique is used when the researcher’s inquiry is based on the participant’s opinion about a particular situation. In that method, the researcher wants to gather subjective data, therefore his personal knowledge and research methodology influences the research to some degree (Herndl & Nahrwold, 2000). One of the most important outcomes with this method is that it highlights the researcher’s views during the research process. Quantitative research method, on the other hand, is used to describe variables and examine relationships among those variables (Creswell, 2001). According to Creswell (2001), this research is the mostly used method of scientific investigation in nursing and can determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It is also very useful in testing a theory by testing the validity and reliability of the specific relationship. Qualitative research method therefore seems to be appropriate for this study as it seeks to find out the nature of knowledge management of U.K. banking sector. This study is mainly explanatory in nature and has to be based on some personal opinions on this issue of knowledge management and not on any sorts of secondary data. This study does not attempt to quantify any variable or examine the extent by which one particular variable is related to another in order to test some hypothesis. Hence, qualitative research will only be able to serve our purpose. It is now necessary to evaluate to what extent qualitative research technique will be able to fulfil the objectives of this study. For any qualitative research, the process of data generation is used to be based on the participants’ own categories of meaning. It is useful for studying a limited number of cases in depth, and tends to collect data in naturalistic settings (Creswell, 2001). Types of data collected generally involve the opinions and beliefs of the researcher and the subjects that are being examined, through the use of various instruments. Instruments used to collect the data include case studies, interviews, focus groups and observation (Creswell, 1994). The best way of doing a qualitative research is conducting a primary survey. Primary surveys most of the time are conducted through interviews. In this case also, a primary survey is required to be undertaken. For conducting a primary survey in an efficient way, interview is considered to be a very useful and powerful tool, particularly in case of qualitative researches. During any research, interviews of the selected people are conducted to find out what a person actually think regarding a particular issue. Interviews enable researchers to access the perspective of the people who are being interviewed. Through interviews it is possible to find out certain important things relevant to the studies that can not be obtained or observed directly. Interviews also help in uncovering and exploring the meanings of certain things related to the people’s behaviour, feelings, routines etc. Furthermore, interviewing also stands for a measure of systematic data collection by asking different sort of questions, listening to them carefully and recording and noting all the answers accurately. Through in interviews researchers get an access to a wide range of experiences, different kinds of circumstances and a range of knowledge that could otherwise not be obtained. During an interview, there exists a great chance that an interviewee would describe some private or sensitive behaviors, relevant to the topic of interview that took place in past or in some locations which are inaccessible for the interviewer. Interviews are also able to provide certain information regarding the means or definitions that people give to different events or behaviors. (Arksey and Knight, 1999) This study aims at finding out prevailing knowledgebase strategy and its efficiency in U.K. banks. And for this, the best technique to gather relevant information for the purpose of analysis is not to gather any kind of secondary information but to conduct direct interviews with those employees of banks who are directly involved in knowledge management activities. Interviews can be of various types as follows: -Structured interviews: Closed, fixed response interviews. In this method, similar questions are administered to all the respondents with the option of selecting responses from similar alternatives. - Semi-structured interviews: Standardized, open-ended interviews where a standard set of open-ended questions is administered to all the respondents. - Unstructured interviews: Informal conversational interviews where questions to be asked are not formulated in advance. (Arksey and Knight, 1999) Among these three types of interviews, the selection of a particular form depends on the nature of the study. Since this research on knowledge management in U.K. banking sector is mainly explanatory in nature, a semi-structured interview technique will come to our help. This kind of interviews is capable of exploring relationships between different aspects relevant for the study. Semi-structured interviews generally consider a number of open-ended questions in different categories selected by the researcher. Open-ended questions must be framed in detail and have to be straight to the point so that the level of confusion can be minimised in the best possible manner. Through semi-structured interviews, valid and reliable answers are expected to be gathered. Before conducting final interviews researchers have to keep in mind one thing that the questions have to be pre-tested for avoiding all the irrelevant questions to the main topic. One of the major advantages of this interviewing technique is that through this technique the questions set by the researchers can be discussed with the interviewees with more detail and this is the reason behind considering the technique of filling up the questionnaire and the technique of observation and field notes together while interviewing some one. The data obtained through this type of interviewing is very extensive. This process, however, has one disadvantage. In some occasions, interviewees tend to give long answers and later on it become difficult as well as time consuming in transcribing the data from this long answers. But given the explanatory nature of this study, semi-structured form of interviews seems to be the most appropriate among all the three techniques. (Kvale, 1996; Herndl and Nahrwold, 2000) Once the form of interview is decided, it necessary to decide on the process through which interviews will be conducted. Interviews can be conducted through telephones, or through emails or directly by face-to face. All these three ways of interviewing have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, in case of face to face interviews in-depth knowledge sharing is possible. It also helps in developing bigger picture regarding the selected issue and analyzing the results in more elaborate way. Face-to-face interview is also good for networking. However, it has certain disadvantages, like it is very much time consuming and very often interviewers find it difficult to arrange an interview time with all the interviewees. Face-to-face interview also possess difficulty during the time of comparing and analysing information. Among all the disadvantages of face-to-face interviews the major disadvantage is setting an appointment with the interviewees as in most of the cases interviewees are found to be very busy, specially in case of those interviewees who hold high profile jobs. In some cases, interviewers are left with no response from the people they have targeted for the interviews. There exists one technique that can solve this problem and can increase the response rate of the data collection method. This process is email interview. (Floyd , 2002) Interviews through emails have several advantages. For example, email interviews provide the interviewers with ready-made data and therefore interviewers can save their time from transcribing the data. This technique is also economical and convenient to the respondents also. The data obtained through email interviews are not worse than that obtained from face-to-face interview. Rather, the answers obtained from email interviews are more direct and straight to the point. This makes it easier for the researcher to transcribe the data. One can think that during face-to-face interview more information’s and ideas can be drawn compared to email interviews. But this is not always true. All these actually depend on the interviewee. One major advantage of email interviews is that the respondents can remain anonymous and can speak more freely without any kind of constraint. However, in case of email interviews the process of observation and field notes becomes inactive as there are no face-to-face interactions and therefore no facial expressions or body languages of the respondents can not be observed and analyzed by the interviewers. (Floyd , 2002) Interviews over telephone can also be an efficient way of collecting relevant data. If the respondents are found to be busy professionals, telephonic interviews are conducted. Telephonic interviews are also appropriate when the questions demand straight forward answers. Telephonic interviews are found to be more efficient in terms of cost and time when the respondents are widely geographically distributed. But it has also a number of disadvantages. First of all, in case of interviews over telephone, respondents are less likely to spend long time answering questions. In case of telephonic interviews the questions are required to fixed response type. Open-end questions are difficult to be managed over the phone than face-to-face. Telephonic interview is also more expensive than interview through e-mails and provide just as good responses as could be obtained from other forms of interviews. (Arksey and Knight, 1999; Silverman, 2004) For the present study, face to face interviews will come to a great help as it is explanatory in nature and detailed opinions of the participants through long conversations are required to explain the current nature of knowledge management of in the banking sector of U.K. There, However, lies some problems in this regard as the participants selected for the purpose of in this study are bank employees some of whom are high profile workers and deeply involved in the process of strategy making, like those who hold managerial positions in the banks, use to be very busy, it would not be possible for them to give sufficient amount of time required for this survey. But this problem can easily be solved through conducting either telephonic interviews or interviews via email on the basis of choices of the participants. For example, telephonic interviews will be conducted with those people who hold higher positions in their organizations and assume more responsibilities and hence use to have less time to spend on any long face to face interviews and also reluctant to fill up questionnaire through email. On the other hand interviewees through emails will be conducted in those cases when interviewees will be unable to give any date for face to face interviews and but will be ready to fill questionnaire through emails. With the rest of the selected bank employees face to face interviews will be conducted. Once the interview form and technique are decided it is necessary to prepare an appropriate questionnaire. It is one of the most crucial parts of a research which is based on interviewees. Questionnaire needs to be developed in such a way the each of the questions is not only understandable from the point of view of the participants, but also does not incorporate any sensitive issue that makes respondents uncomfortable while answering. Questionnaire should avoid all types of personal questions. (Arksey and Knight, 1999) Once questionnaire is prepared, interviews can be conducted. After receiving answers from the respondents, the last task at the hand for completing this study will be to analyze answers of the respondents to each of question and on the basis of these answers form an over all idea regarding the prevailing knowledge management system and its efficiency level in the banking sector of the United Kingdom. Conclusion Reviewing the entire technique of the selected research method for the examining the issue under consideration, it can be said that qualitative research technique will come to a great help to conduct a successful research on the issue under consideration. But every step of this research method should be followed with due care. Sufficient amount of patience is needed as the entire research report will be based on the opinion of a bunch of selected people, not on any ready made secondary data, and therefore it is necessary to deal with these participants in the survey process with due care so that accurate answers can be obtained. While conducting a successful, some ethical issues need to be addressed properly. These ethical issues include providing adequate information to the researchers on the organization which is involved in the research process, the sponsorship, a brief and accurate description on the purpose of the survey, an accurate statement of the degree to which respondents’ answers will be protected in regards to the privacy need, an assurance that respondents participation in the research process will completely be voluntary nature, not enforced, and an assurance that respondents will not be obligated to answer each of the questions if they agrees to participate in the survey (Floyd, 2002). If these challenges on ethical ground are met adequately, then probability of obtaining requires answers from the participants will become very high. Once the answers of the respondents are obtained to each of the questions it will be possible to analyse those and form a general opinion regarding the issue under consideration. References: 1. Creswell, J. W. 2001. 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