DBN608 - BNZ Case Study: Modern Business Practices Analysis

This case study examines the Bank of New Zealand's (BNZ) modern business practices, focusing on ethics, organizational culture, and performance. It explores social ethical issues like women's participation in business, operations in the digital environment including cybercrime prevention, and competition against Fintech startups. The study also addresses speculative banking and provides recommendations for cybercrime prevention, competing with online lenders, and remedying speculative banking practices. Part 2 delves into the global economy, business practices theories, organizational goals, the impact of globalization, and the acknowledgment of women customers. The analysis emphasizes the importance of ethics, culture, and adaptability in achieving organizational success within a dynamic and competitive business landscape. Desklib provides access to similar case studies and solved assignments for students.

Running head: MODERN BUSINESS AND PRACTICE
Modern business and practice
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Name

2Modern business and practice
Table of Contents
Part 1..........................................................................................................................................3
1.1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................3
1.2. Ethics, culture and organizational performance..................................................................3
1.2.1........................................................................................................................................3
1.2.3........................................................................................................................................4
1.3...............................................................................................................................................4
1.4.1 Operations in the digital environment...........................................................................5
1.4.2 Competition against the Fintech start-ups.....................................................................5
1.4.3 Speculative Banking......................................................................................................6
1.5 Recommendations................................................................................................................6
1.5.1 Cybercrime Prevention..................................................................................................6
1.5.2 Competition against the online lenders.........................................................................7
1.5.3 Remedy of speculative banking.....................................................................................8
Part 2..........................................................................................................................................8
2.1...............................................................................................................................................8
2.2...............................................................................................................................................8
2.2.1........................................................................................................................................8
2.2.2........................................................................................................................................9
2.3...............................................................................................................................................9
2.3.1 Definition of Organisational Goals...............................................................................9

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2.3.2 Characteristics of Organisational Goals......................................................................10
2.4. 1 Importance of Organisational Goals...........................................................................10
2.5 Impact of Globalisation on strategic business management..............................................11
2.6 The acknowledgement of the potential of women customers............................................11
2.6 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................12
Reference List..........................................................................................................................13

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Part 1
1.1. Introduction
The chosen organization for this paper is the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). It is
considered to be one of the largest banks of New Zealand which was founded in the year
1861 (Bnz.co.nz, 2018). They have taken up the social ethical initiative for various reasons.
The organization wants to provide a clear leadership towards their employees so the leaders
can motivate them. One of their most important social ethical initiatives has been the
establishment of gender equality in the organization. The organization BNZ has been catering
to the needs of the society by empowering the role of the women.
1.2. Ethics, culture and organizational performance
1.2.1
Every organization must cater to their social responsibilities while working within any
industry. It is because the organizations work within an environment in which millions of
people live (Armstrong et al., 2015). If they cannot provide the people with certain facilities
as a token of acknowledgement, this will be a drawback for them. The organizations have to
be so much active in providing certain benefits to the social beings. The economic growth of
the country and society welfare should be given the major priority. They are very much keen
on making the decisions that should be favoring the common people of the society
(Buchholtz & Carroll, 2012). 1.2.2.
The organizational culture is one of the most important components for the betterment
of the organization. Through the culture in an organization, one can be able to understand the
various things related to the organization like the expectations of the customers from the
company, the systems that the organization follows and many others. The shared beliefs and
attitudes of the organizations are reflected through the organizational culture. The vision,

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mission and values decide the organizational culture. The employees have to work in a proper
working environment that should be effective for the career building for the employees. The
habits of the employees should be dictated by the proper organizational culture (Alvesson,
2012).
1.2.3.
Another very important thing in this context in the success of the organizations is the
organizational performance. The performance of the organizations is measured upon several
things. The ethics of the employees is very important because the brand reputation of the
organizations depend on the ethical considerations made by the employees. The organizations
should train their employees in a way that they should always behave in an ethical manner.
The organizations should also maintain a culture that they can assimilate various types of
employees belonging to different cultures (Yukl, 2013).
The leadership is a vital part of the organizational culture. The leaders should practice the
democratic leadership and want the advice from their subordinates (Northouse, 2018). This
would be highly important for the leaders to exert the proper culture of the organization.
1.3.
One of the social ethical issues in this context is the participation of women in the
businesses. In the contemporary period, the focus has been strongly on the women associates
in the organization. In some organizations, the managers do not want to appoint the women
as their employees because of the limitations they have in the society for taking part in the
business. However, New Zealand has been one of the leading countries who have taken
active part in the motivating the women empowerment (Duflo, 2012). The organizations in
New Zealand are in favor of appointing the women in different positions as many as they can.
The United Nations has also set up a proper committee that would look after this social issue.

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It is, therefore, suggested that the organizations should always try to make women powerful
in achieving the targets for the organization. Some organizations are even trying to provide
jobs to the women of the ethnic minority groups. The organization discussed here is the BNZ
that will look to employ the gender balance approach for providing the women the best
opportunities (Fairhurst & Connaughton, 2014)
1.4.1 Operations in the digital environment
The Industrial Relations director of the bank puts stress on the fact that the customers should
feel comfortable expect the best service when they give some institution the access to their
personal data (Belal, Abdelsalam & Nizamee, 2015). This is challenge for the banks to
generate such value that the customer feel that granting right to access their private data
enables the banks to give better service to them. The implementation of cyber security is
problematic for the organisation for two causes. First is the large customer base. This large
customer base would incur large operational costs for installation of cyber safety measures
and allied technologies. Hence the IT costs of the company is likely to increase by 12%
(Scherer et al. 2016). Another prospect is that high cultural diversity of the New Zealand
customers require greater marketing costs for popularising the electronic services for the
various target customers.
Eriksson & Kovalainen, (2015), stresses that there are three pivotal areas of data protection.
The first is the acquisition of the customer’s consent to utilise customer’s private data without
his or her consent at will. The second factor is allocation of full right to the customers to
tackle and instruct the bank regarding how they should handle customer data (Schäfer, 2016).
The third and most important factor is providing enough security to the customer to make
safe and private cyber transactions.
1.4.2 Competition against the Fintech start-ups

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25 years ago, Bill gates had dismissed the small retail institutions calling them dinosaurs.
However, today the myth is a reality. Providing banking services to the Small and medium
organisations have been stirringly unaffected with the popularity of the internet. With
increase in digitalisation the banks have streamlined them to focus more on the routine
transactions like providing online access to personal bank accounts or allowing remote
deposits. In an emerging country like New Zealand, where SAMEs are doing spurting
business there is acute requirement to provide easy banking solutions to them, for facilitating
the ease of business. In that context the banking organisation have taken a backseat. Presently
only 7% of the credit assets of the bank are linked with operations of SMEs of New Zealand
(Lock, & Seele, 2015).
1.4.3 Speculative Banking
The asset lending and investment that the banks does require lot of caution and responsibility.
Fore mostly, it should be remembered that the bank is investing other people assets that they
have kept for security and deposit with the banks (Martin, 2015). Therefore overall
speculative investments and unmanaged credit lending is a morally despicable practice.
Particularly in the case of high risk associated with high return kind of clients make the
mistake of irresponsible investments. In most cases the banks end up making high end
speculative investments associated with very risky securities, like derivatives. In those cases
they do not accept enough collateral or subprime mortgages (Lodhia, 2015).
Such kinds of investments gets ethically immoral in the light of the fact that the clients do not
get adequate information regarding the kind of investments where the bank has been
depositing or engaging his or her money.
1.5 Recommendations
1.5.1 Cybercrime Prevention

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As digitalisation is exposing the vulnerabilities of the financial institutions, the threat of
cybercrime is intensifying in New Zealand. Cyber attacker are sophisticated and quite
organised. They are mostly profit seeking or belonging to pressure groups.
Hence in this situation, new technologies of threat detection and clear framework and risk
mapping is essential. In this regard, the challenge is also between implementation of stringent
security measures and ensuring convenient digital banking for the customers. Biometrics is a
popular practice of password and/or pin protection (also authentication). In the future,
technological authentication of the fingerprints or the retina scan or palm-prints would not be
enough. The banks of New Zealand need to implement technology that would also recognize
the voice patterns, or handwriting style or their keystroke dynamics. Such a combination of
the physiological as well as the behavioural traits are the perfect means of tackling the
modern fraudsters.
1.5.2 Competition against the online lenders
The newer online creditors have made the transaction process for the customers more user
friendly. In this context, the banks also needs to implement similar processes. The Bank of
New Zealand along with other kiwi banks should reject the process of filling out paperwork
and walking to branches for authentication. The organisation should also lessen the approval
time. Software that are enable to do data driven algorithms should be implemented. Besides,
the banks should adopt processes like checking personal credit score of the entrepreneurs of
the SMEs DDA data and other things like bank statements of last 3 to 5 months for granting
of loans. Relevant software companies should be given the responsibility of conducting the
above stated processes. Fore mostly, the banks should themselves use their expertise and
track records to decide which client to undertake and which to reject. As such it is essential
that all transaction between the banks and the customers are white label transactions.

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1.5.3 Remedy of speculative banking
The employees of the bank are supposed to examine all the transactions properly and also he
intended transactions whenever there is a risk of money laundering activity or terrorist
activity relating to banking activities. Tis applies in most cases to transactions which are very
unusual and are very extensive and much complicated. Tracing the normal activities of the
client if the bank finds that the activities are not somehow linked with any logical financial
purpose, the bank have the right to take few steps on the grounds of suspicion. Financial
transactions should be freeze and charges of criminal sanctioning might be applied if any
fraud activity is traced.
Part 2
2.1.
In today’s world, global economy in the market is a very complex process. The
organizations try to survive in the competitive business environment by applying the best
economic strategies to gain the profits. This will probably help them to gain the best results
for the future (Cohn, 2016). The economic feasibility into the organizations will have to be
incurred. The organization BNZ will look to focus more on the creativity and innovation into
their business. They want to recruit the best talents and retain them. This will be helpful for
them to invest less on the human resource and gain the maximum profits out from it. The
business resilience will have to be looked after by measuring the economic risks. The women
empowerment is one of the most burning aspects in the contemporary society and they will
like to focus on this issue to overcome the market challenges (Cohn, 2016).
2.2.
2.2.1.

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The business practices are the methods by which the organizations will be able to
achieve their objectives. These methods will depend on the current condition of the
companies. These business practices will generally include the different marketing strategies,
financial conditions and others. This is why the organizations will need to implement their
business practices at the right time (Cohen, 2017)
Some of the relevant business practice theories are related to the organizational
culture, organizational structure, maintaining the business ethics and others (Cohen, 2017)
The business practices for the company can be maintained properly if the organizations want
to carry on the transparent traditions related to business. This will earn them to earn the high
profits in business effectively. The business sustainability should be achieved through these
business practices effectively.
2.2.2
It is very important for the organizations to be modern in their approach to the
business practices. The Human Resource department should focus on proper training and
development of the employees for better organizational performance. The companies should
also look to put the stress on the social media marketing (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Thus the
companies will be able to make good relationships with the customers. This will be helpful
for the organization to get more customers at their disposal and operate effectively amidst
several challenges.
2.3
2.3.1 Definition of Organisational Goals
Organisational goals can be defined as a statement that offers a brief description of the
desired future steps of the organisation. It implies what the organisation is trying to achieve in
a given span of time. Organisational goals might be strategic where the organisation would

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declare where it wants to see itself at the end of the desired time span. They can be tactical
also. By virtue of tactical goals the company sets short term goals for the individual
departments of the company.
2.3.2 Characteristics of Organisational Goals
There are 5 characteristics of successful organisational goal setting. Specific goals which are
well defined help the companies to find success in an ambiguous and uncertain business
atmosphere. Some specimens of specific organisational goals are making of 120 cold call, or
launch of a new product or selling of 50 units of an existing product. Some goals are
measurable against a standard. In case if the sale of 10 units is an average sales rate per
month. Then the company might target 12 to 15 units’ sales target for the next month. Again,
organisational goals should be realistic. The product with average sales rate of 15 units
should not be targeted for a sales rate of 25 units. This is unrealistic. Again, if the company is
setting tactical goals, then they should be relevant to the job roles. The sales target for a sales
executi9ve is supposed to definitely higher than that of a customer service represented, who
might achieve an occasional ancillary sell. Again, deadlines should be set for achievement of
goals.
2.4. 1 Importance of Organisational Goals
There are some significant benefits of having organisational goals set. Goals help in
professional development of the company’s employees. Employees would more oriented to
working if goals are set by the company and as such they would try to develop their key skills
so that they are able to work with more precision and proficiency. Again, setting
no0rghanisational goals help the company to measure the performance of the employees.
Organisations with no specific organisational goal are not able to anticipate the development
of their employee’s performance. According to the ideas of (Belal, Abdelsalam & Nizamee,

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2015), it can be defined that the tensions and clumsiness in the workforce is greater where the
goals are not clearly defined. Employees lack job motivation also.
2.5 Impact of Globalisation on strategic business management
Globalisation has created numerous avenues for sharing knowledge and information, sharing
technological assistance and thereby also impose behavioural norms that the business
communities performing across borders need to follow. Swift development of the IT
infrastructure have led to the rapid globalisation. In this context it is essential to have a global
leadership team that is supposed to decide the strategy foe operating in the international
markets. The implication and influence of globalisation on the banking and financial services
sector is immense. Owing to the global financial crises in 2007, international banking have
been under the limelight. As an aftermath of the crises, many organisations held the banks
guilty for shifting the shocks across the countries. The G-20 and other foreign policy makers
also showed concerns over the effects of international banking (Lock & Seele, 2015). Faster
financial growth and acquisition of financial safety came to be defined in different terms
now. The banks needed to put more stress on the strengthening of capital, expertise and
technological growth so that the impact of the operations can be monitored properly. This
would help the financial organisations of the domestic sector would become more
competitive and thus they would be in a better position for risk sharing and enabling financial
diversification.
2.6 The acknowledgement of the potential of women customers
Growing business opportunities that stem form the potential that women consumers bring
into the market are high. Around the globe the women contribute about $20 trillion USD in
spending in the consumer market. In New Zealand, about 60% of the purchasing decisions
are taken by the women workforce. In this regard, it is essential for the drivers of economy to

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bridge the gap between the male and the female employment rate. New Zealand stands sixth
in the world in terms of gender equality and giving political seats to women. Other than that,
in many occasions of professional life, women participation have increased about 2 to 3 %
(Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). Again, it is evident that women constuitytre3 about 22.5%
of the board members in the banks of New Zealand. In comparison to other OECD nations,
the rate of women participation in various economic context is higher. However, the nation
have lower percentage of women in decision making job roles. In this regard, the organisation
have adopted an approach of gender balance. This is why the bank gives absolute prominence
to their women customers and instructs every employee to help every women customer to
actualise their full financial potential.
2.6 Conclusion
Analysing the context of banking and allied practices and societal polices popular among the
bank and the customers, it can be concluded that ethical consideration should be given high
prominence. The bank of New Zealand should consider giving importance to each and every
clients. However the discriminatory policies among clients should be obliterated. Further it
can be concluded that the Bank of New Zealand is a major contributor to the financial
exchange that takes place in the country. On that ground it can be professed that they should
give importance to each of the customers so that the decentralisation of economy is possible.
Moreover, setting of the organisational goals is also very essential. This helps the
organisations to improve their service quality and internal control. In context of the financial
institutions of New Zealand, this is also applicable. In the end, one of the essential business
strategies of BNZ, that is empowerment of the women consumers have been justified. In light
of the increasing spending capacity of the women, it can be conclude that giving importance
to the potential of the women customers is also essential.

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Reference List
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