| dc.description.abstract | Organizational environments are everything beyond the boundaries of organizations that
can directly or indirectly affect performance and outcomes. In this study the main focus is
on strategic responses to environmental changes. Barclays Bank of Kenya is one of the
forty four commercial bank licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya. The bank is
embracing new technologies which have brought about enormous impact to officers,
employees, and customers of banks. Advances in technology are allowing for delivery of
banking products and services more conveniently and effectively than ever before thus
creating new bases of competition. Several research studies have been done in relation to
strategic responses to environmental change but the results of prior researches have been
rather inconclusive and have not fully focused on the impact of these responses by firms
in Kenya. This study sought to add to the previous studies by conducting a research to
establish how the environmental changes influence organizations and the strategies that
have been adopted by these organizations to survive in such environments. This study
employed a case study where face to face interview has been used as primary data
collection method. The data was analyzed using content analysis. Content analysis
enables researchers to sift through large volumes of data with relative ease in a systematic
fashion. The study found that there were high level of technological solution in Barclay's
banks through adoption of mobile banking, adoption of internet banking, through various
financial innovation, adoption credit card, use of debit cards among the customer s,
strategic alliance with ken switch ATM provider and increasing service delivery and
credit information sharing. The study established that challenges faced in the banking
sector in response to technological change were high cost of acquiring technology,
technological failures, lack of expertise, lack of customer know how on how to use
technology, resistance to change by the staff, slow speed of adoption by users,
government regulation, stiff competition in the banking sector and lack of top
management support for the technological changes. The researcher faced various
limitations that were likely to hinder success to the information sought by the study. The
study used an interview guide as the instrument for collecting data from managers of
Barclays Bank who were not easily available which led to the period of data collection to
be longer. This study has explored the strategic responses to technological change by
Barclays bank of Kenya. There are other financial institutions and companies in Kenya
whose orientation in technology is close to that of Barclays Bank but differ in their
strategic response adopted. There is therefore a need to do another comprehensive to investigate the strategic responses to environmental changes in other financial
institutions in Kenya. | en_US |
