An investigation into change management at Himalayan Bank Limited (HBL).
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: In developing economies, organisations and financial sectors are undertaking significanttechnological transformations and re-evaluating their strategies, policies, operations, andculture to withstand competition and sustain market share. However, effectively managingchange under the purview of change management is one of the biggest challenges that anorganisation faces due to the unpredictability of human involvement. Further, research hasdiscovered that organisational changes induce a certain degree of resistance in employeebehaviour, affecting the implementation and smooth running of those new strategies. Thus,managers and change agents are eager to learn how to manage and encourage employees toaccept the desired changes. The objectives of this research were to examine the perceptions oforganisational change and factors contributing to the resistance to those changes amongstemployees working in Himalayan Bank in Nepal. Additionally, shedding light on variousstrategies established and implemented for smooth execution of new changes.Change and resistance to change in the banking industry in Nepal is relatively an underresearchedtopic in the existing literature of change management. Instead, similar studies focusmore on performance management systems, career growth and employee turnover, andstrategic HRD practices in Nepalese Banks. This research gap convinced the researcher toinvestigate the paradigms of change management in HBL. In general, it is an exciting and welltimedtopic, given the current changes taking place in the Nepalese banking industry andfinancial institutions.This study is proceeded by a systemic review of literature that includes numerous factorsresulting in organisational change and models such as the 3-step change model by Kurt Lewin(1951) and nine cultural dimensions proposed by house et al. (2004). This study is a mixedmethodapproach using a questionnaire and interviews with senior executives and juniorparticipants of various departments. This empirical study explores respondents' views and experiences on organisational change management and the challenges/barriers faced inimplanting those changes. Furthermore, this research also seeks to understand the strategiesadministered to minimise the resistance amongst employees. Data were analysed usingdescriptive statistics for the questionnaire and thematic analysis for the interviews. After,common themes from both sets of data were generated for a detailed discussion. The findingsreveal that the employees understand the phenomenon and the importance of organisationalchange within the Bank. However, resistance is monitored in the Bank when any small- orlarge-scale change strategies are implemented. Autocratic hierarchical leadership, lack ofcommunication, and involvement are the significant critical sources of resistance. On the otherhand, key participants view current change reforms positively, raising the prospects for moreeffective change strategies to be executed in the Bank, which will be well communicated andencourage employee engagement.This study contributes to the literature on change management, particularly for Nepal. Addingto that, it bridges the gap between employees' viewpoints on organisational change working inthe Himalayan Bank and the empirical literature available on this topic. Previous studies havenot endeavoured to assemble the views of employees working in the Nepalese bankingindustry, especially in the Himalayan Bank limited. Lastly, for the future, this study may assistthe management and change agents within HBL in assessing, designing, and evaluating new orexisting programs in a way that the general employees readily accept.
Author: Gill, Rawal Ejaz
Institution: University of the West of Scotland
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7104266747
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: