Postmodern Organization and Service Delivery: An Empirical Exploration of Structural Transformation in the Nigerian Banking Industry

ABSTRACT

Post structural banking has employed electronic based practices that have challenged the continued dominance of the traditional Weberian bureaucratic model to improving service delivery. These global practices are anchored in postmodern organization. In a bid to be globally compliant and to improve on service delivery, the Nigerian banking industry adopted a postmodern structure in its operation in spite of the country's low technological and infrastructural development. Postmodern theory, Structuration theory and theory Z were used to explain structures of postmodernism, extent of postmodern organization, employees’ actions within the work environment, the role of external environment and effect of postmodern organization on service delivery. The study was conducted in six banks selected from the twenty one existing commercial banks in Nigeria. It employed both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. The findings suggest that the adoption of postmodern organization by the banking industry in Nigeria has significantly improved service delivery, though implementing some key features of postmodernism such as, decentralization and employee empowerment have created local contradictions leading to poor integration of existing traditional structures with postmodern features. The role of the wider Nigerian socio-cultural, technological and infrastructural environments in the emergent scenario is highlighted. It was concluded that the level of tecnological development of a society has bearings with the level of success achievable in the adotion of postmodern organization for banking.