Case Study – Royal Bank of Scotland acquisition of NatWest
Assessment 2: Change management plan based on a case study
This assessment is aimed at students’ understanding of the change process, integrating knowledge from different topics in the field when formulating diagnostic reports on work situations, acknowledging the complexity of organizational processes.
Case Study – Royal Bank of Scotland acquisition of NatWest
At 7.30am on 6th March 2000, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced its ‘acquisition’ of NatWest to the stock exchange. This was an unusual acquisition of a larger institution (£186 billion assets, 64,400 staff) by a smaller one (£75 billion assets, 22,000 staff) amongst the Big Five retail banks. The news relayed to NatWest staff as soon as possible (who had been kept informed of the bidding process, which had also received a lot of media attention), with emails awaiting them at around 8.30am the same morning. Within three days, RBS had closed down the NatWest head office and chosen only the best employees to remain. The acquisition process was dealt with ‘rationally’ by keeping staff informed on every aspect of change. In the words of the Group CEO, Fred Goodwin, ‘we believe that it is important to remove uncertainty for staff as quickly as possible.’ The imposition of the RBS system of technology into ‘the NatWest branch’ was justified as saving the company around £1million a day.
Start by identifying what elements you recognise in the case study that require attention and discussion. Then move on to present a theoretical model of change that was applied in this situation. How could it have been done differently? Questions you can ask/answer are:
What methods can be used to further investigate the presented situation?
What other organisational processes come to mind that may play a role in this scenario?
How can the presenting problem and these processes be addressed?
What interventions would be put in place? How?
How would you plan to evaluate their effect on the employees?
