CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

Technology is being used in every organization to carry out a specific task and it has changed the office settings and reduces human errors which could be stressful. Technology like computers, tablets, social networks, virtual meeting software, accounting software, customer management applications etc. had facilitated the movement of information and accelerates decision-making in an organization.

Technology can be defined as the products, methods, inventions, and standard that is used for the purpose of producing information (Kroenke, 2012). Technology includes tools, machinery, equipment, work procedures, and employee knowledge and skills. In today”s competitive world, technological advancements can dramatically influence organizational service markets, suppliers, distributors, competitors, customers, manufacturing processes, marketing practices and competitive position.

Technological advancement in its smallest details of day to day activities does impact individuals as well as work teams and the organization as a whole. Technological advancement can create a new competitive advantage that is more relevant and powerful than the existing ones which could pave way for significant operational improvements (Kamal and Kumar, 2013) because an organizational ability to attract, recruit and retain the right qualified employees with the most basic skills required to do their jobs has a direct impact on the organization”s ability to compete with others in the same industry. Although, the introduction of new technology in the office sometimes poses difficult challenges for employees and managers while manager-employee relations suffer.

Over the past decades, the enthusiasm which created the emergent of new digital technology has been replaced by a growing skepticism among the general public. It is increasingly recognized that the financial and organizational benefits to measure new technologies especially information technologies have been widely exaggerated and that many tools and technologies fail to enhance the activities of which they are designed for. The adoption of a new technology may be viewed as merely an upgrade of existing technology rather than a replacement of some outdated “paper and pencil” business method. As a result of the continued influx of technology incorporated in the office, increasing numbers of employees need to be either train or re-train in order to keep up with the changes in their job demands.

A generation is a group of people living together or of approximately the same age. Kaye (2012) defined a generation as a group of individuals with similar age parameter classification. Multi-generational workforce refers to different generations working together in a given organization defined based on the year each employee was born, from the traditionalist to boomers, generation X to Generation Y or millennials. Each group has a different work style, values and communication preferences. They are all motivated differently and their acceptance of any new development, change and technology differ. Robbins and Coulter (2013) pointed out that one issue with older workers is the perception that people have of those workers such as “they are sick more often and they can”t work as hard or as fast as younger employees as well as adaptation and being resistant to new technology while younger workers are seen as being flexible and easily adaptable to new ways of doing things including technological innovations”. Meanwhile, older workers experience, values, judgment, a strong work ethic, and a commitment to doing quality work cannot be underrated towards the realization of organizational goals. As typical organization changes to keep up with new technologies, a consequent modification in cultural expectation may occur which can be a jarring transition for older employees who are used to having their performances being measured by the number of real progress must offer flexibility and openness in adapting to technological advancement.

Introduction of new technologies has helped organizations to develop tremendously in the operations of their businesses, which is been embraced by all workforce in different organizations because it improves communication and collaboration for example; employees from different departments in a company can use text messaging services or video-conferencing tools like Skype to share or exchange relevant information.  Moreover, Morris et al (2005) pointed out that implementation of new business technologies has become so invasive that its adoption is now considered to be a routine part of a day to day operations .

In order to determine the multi-generational challenges that are being faced by an organization with respect to communication, teamwork and support, collaboration, transfer of learning, and respect for each other. Sujansky and Ferri-Reed, (2009) explained that managers would be faced with the responsibility of motivating, managing and retaining multi-generational workforce because managers that are not proactive and prepared enough would find it difficult to adjust to technological changes in the organization as well as disruption of knowledge transfer and competitive advantages. However, there are some employees because of their manager”s reactiveness, they might not be willing to accept new technology based on their attitude and perception towards it. For this reason, this research study seeks to evaluate the challenges that different generational workforce of First Bank Nigeria would face in the introduction of new technology.

1.1.1    Historical Background of First Bank of Nigeria

The founder, Alfred Lewis Jones, was a shipping magnate who originally had a monopoly on importing silver currency into West Africa through his Elder Dempster shipping company. According to its founder, without a bank economies were reduced to using barter and a wide variety of mediums of exchange, leading to unsound practices. First Bank commenced business in 1894 in what was then the British colony of Nigeria, as the Bank of British West Africa. The bank originally served British shipping and trading agencies in Nigeria. A bank could provide a secure home for deposits and also a uniform medium of exchange. The bank primarily financed foreign trade but did little lending to indigenous Nigerians, who had little to offer as collateral for loans

After Nigeria”s independence in 1960, the Bank began to extend more credit to Nigerians. At the same time, citizens began to trust British banks since there was an “independent” financial control mechanism and more citizens began to patronize the new Bank of West Africa. In 1965, Standard Bank acquired the Bank of West Africa and changed its acquisition”s name to Standard Bank of West Africa. In 1969, Standard Bank of West Africa incorporated its Nigerian operations under the name Standard Bank of Nigeria. In 1971, Standard Bank of Nigeria listed its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and placed 13% of its share capital with Nigerian investors.

After the end of the Nigerian civil war, Nigeria”s military government sought to increase local control of the retail-banking sector. In response, now Standard Chartered Bank reduced its stake in Standard Bank Nigeria to 38%. Once it had lost majority control, Standard Chartered wished to signal that it was no longer responsible for the bank and the bank changed its name to First Bank of Nigeria Limited in 1979. By then, the bank had re-organized and had more Nigerian directors than ever. In 1991 the Bank changed its name to First Bank of Nigeria Plc following listing on The Nigerian Stock Exchange. In 2012, the Bank changed its name again to First Bank of Nigeria Limited as part of a restructuring resulting in FBN Holdings Plc (“FBN Holdings”), having detached its commercial business from other businesses in the First Bank Group, in line with the requirements of the Central Bank of Nigeria. First Bank had 1.3 million shareholders globally, was quoted on The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), where it was one of the most capitalized companies and also had an unlisted Global Depository Receipt (GDR) programme, all of which were transferred to its Holding Company, FBN Holdings in December 2012.

In 1982 First Bank opened a branch in London, which it converted into a subsidiary, FBN Bank (UK), in 2002. Its most recent international expansion was the opening in 2004 of a representative office in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2005 it acquired FBN (Merchant Bankers) Ltd. Paribas and MBC International Bank Ltd, a group of Nigerian investors, had founded MBC in 1982 as a merchant bank, and it became a commercial bank in 2002.

Adapting to technology advancement in the banking sector has been in the DNA and culture of First Bank. In 2009, First bank launched a notable corporate transformational projects which includes First Contact, the 24/7 multi-lingual integrated and interactive customer service contact center, a key component of First Bank”s service delivery transformation which revolutionized customer feedback processes; and First Serve, the centralized processing center which serve as a dedicated back-end processing center, drastically minimizing transaction times and standardizing service delivery. First Bank was recognized by Interswitch as the first financial institution in the country to achieve 100 million sustained monthly transactions in electronic payment, in December 2015 and again in May 2016.

Just like its name “First bank” has been named “The Best Bank Brand in Nigeria” for six times in a row – 2011 to 215 and 2016 by the globally recognized The Banker Magazine of the Financial Times Group. The bank has achieved this feat in recognition of its steady transformation, increased brand value and excellent service delivery through the years. Recently, First bank was the first Nigeria indigenous bank to launch its Human Resources Solution in the cloud.

In Nigeria, introduction of new technologies in the banking industry has transformed the patterns of business transaction and competitive advantage in the industry. As a matter of fact, new banks have emerged and they have either sent older ones out of business or made them a mere shadow of their former selves. However, many of the older banks have had to restructure their operations in order to be able to upgrade their performance to remain relevant and compete effectively and efficiently with the new banks.

Moreover, First Bank of Nigeria was chosen as a case study because she has a unique culture which drives the way all their employees behave and interact with internal and external parties. Her culture is distinct from that of other organizations which have been fundamental to the success of the bank. However, in the Nigerian banking industry that this research is poised to look into, it has been observed that few types of research have been done to investigate how technological advancement change has affected and assisted different generation of employees. It is against this background that this study seeks to address the whole question; how can technological advancement help to bridge the bridge the gap between different generations at First Bank of Nigeria?

1.2       Statement of the Problem

There is a problem in the office, it is a problem of values, ambitions, views, mind-sets, demographics, and generations in con?ict. The office you and we inhabit today is awash with the con?icting voices and views of the most age- and value-diverse workforce this country has known since our great-great-grandparents abandoned ?eld and farm for factory and of?ce. (Zemke, Raines, and Filipczak, 2000)

Technological advancement is a challenging task which influences the nature of work and generates obsolescence. Advanced technology will tend to reduce the number of jobs that require little skill and to increase the number of jobs that require considerable skill, a movement from touch labour to knowledge work. It tends to impact employees engagement and retention in the office because employees who lack the basic skills would lack the self-confidence required to fully engage in the organization. There has been lack of investigation and analysis of technological influences on organisational phenomena such as structure, behaviour and different generations of an organization.

Technology advancement is changing rapidly and has generally gone through consistent phases of development ranging from the relative neglect of human and managerial aspects of automation to the realization that affect the system cannot usurp basic employees” functions. One of the consequences of new technology is the ability to work at locations away from the office which would directly affect the organizational objective. Reviewing how the multi-generational workforce accepts, respond to the new technology and what is the advancement of technological development to the organization in surviving in term of competitive advantage in her industry has been a challenge.

In this global environment, managing human capital in order to sustain competitive advantages has escalated to one of the most important functions of human resources managers because some managers are finding it challenging to lead and manage multi-generational workforce because the stress of technological innovations have been expressed by psychologists that technology would make human emotions to become secondary to a dispassionate, computerized civilization. Moreover, experts have explained that the pace of technological change and the explosion of information that accompanies technology swamps professionals with too many new facts to absorb, so that employees find that it takes all the energy they have just to remain qualified for their jobs, much less have time to acquire new skills that, might allow for promotion (Gibbs, 1989).

Although, business uncertainties have made organizations to depend on technology in running their day to day operations, however, an employee”s age might determine the conditions under which new information technology will be embraced. Sichel (1997) pointed that low usage of installed systems has been identified as a major factor underlying the “productivity paradox”, regardless of impressive technological advancement employees still do not optimally utilize technology in performing their work. SHRM (2011) pointed out that about one quarter of human resource professionals had reported extensive level of inter-generational conflict within their organizations because inability to adapt to new technological advancement can create office conflict which would probably not motivate and retain the employees especially the older generation who sees technology as a threat and negativity it brings to their work.

Finally, technological innovation is one of the key challenges facing the Nigerian banking industry and it has been observed that few researches have been done to investigate how technological advancement has affected the performances of the different generational workforce in an organisation. For this reason, this research study seeks to address how technological advancement and innovation can create challenges for multi-generational workforces as well as their performances.

1.3        Objective of the Study

The primary objective of this research is to find out the technological advancement and         multi-generational challenges of employees in First Bank of Nigeria. In order to achieve this, specific objectives of the study are to:

i.          examine how employees attitude would influence and determine their acceptance and usage of new technology in First Bank of Nigeria

ii.         examine the relevance of technological advancement in boosting the morale of  all workforce towards the survival and retention of competitive advantage of First Bank of Nigeria in the Nigerian banking industry

iii.        determine how new technological tools would affect the multi-generational workforce in First Bank of Nigeria, its potential advantages and pitfalls

iv.        determine how organizational managers do lead and manage multi-generational workforce differently with technology

v.         investigate and analyze how technology advancement would influence First Bank of Nigeria”s structure and behaviours of employees

vi.        proffer useful strategies which new technological packages would be accepted by all workforce in First Bank of Nigeria  

1.4       Research Questions

            To achieve the above objectives, this research work will provide answers to the following questions:

i.          Do employees” ages serve as a determinant in their use of technology at First Bank of Nigeria?

ii.         Is there any significant relationship between employees” attitudes and their acceptance of new technology in First Bank of Nigeria?

iii.        Is there any significant relationship between technological advancement, and structure, and employees behaviours in First Bank of Nigeria?

iv.        Is there any significant relationship among technological advancement, motivation and competitive advantage in First Bank of Nigeria?

v.         What useful strategies will this study intend to use for all generational workforce to accept the new technological inventions?

1.5       Research Hypotheses

The following research hypotheses were formulated for the study to facilitate the objective of this study to investigate multi-generational challenges in accepting technological innovation;

Hypothesis One

H01: There is no significant relationship between technological advancement and its usage by different generational workforce in First Bank of Nigeria

Hypothesis Two

H02: Age factor will not have a direct effect on the intention to use when technology is perceived to be voluntary

Hypothesis Three

H03: Generational cohorts will not positively influence behavioural intention to use technology

 Hypothesis Four

H04: Organizational managers will not be able to lead and manage multi-generational workforce differently with technology

Hypothesis Five

H05: There is no significant relationship between technology, motivation and competitive advantage in First Bank Nigeria

1.6       Significance of the Study

A study of this kind is expected to make theoretical and practical contributions to various institutions, professional managers and the civil service in the development and growth of their respective firms.

This study will act as an eye-opener to First Bank of Nigeria on how organizational profitability, large market share, competitive advantage, high productivity, satisfied and motivated workforce will be achieved through effective collaborations of different generations within an organization. It will also show how the organization would see the importance of technological advancement in orde