MANAGING HOLISTICALLY

Managing Holistically

Managing Holistically

Part 1

Introduction

National Bank of Kuwait is one of the largest and most prominent banks of Kuwait. The total assets of the bank worth more than around $49 billion dollars. The operations of the bank were started in the year 1952 and from that time the National Bank of Kuwait has shown significant growth in the banking sector. It has become one of the most prominent banks of Kuwait and considered to be a landmark for the country in the recent years. It has been estimated that around sixty percent of the customers are being served by the National Bank of Kuwait including corporate, government, private and individual customers. The bank has been providing the services to these stakeholders as well as the investment banking services. There are around 72 branches of the National Bank of Kuwait that are spread all over the country. Whereas, on international level the bank has also shown significant growth and the number of estimated branches around the globe amounts to be 100 all over the world. Some of the prominent location where the business has been setup includes Jordan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Some of the international locations where the National Bank of Kuwait operates include France, China, Singapore, Switzerland, Vietnam and United Kingdom.

The bank has been showing significant growth prospects for a long period of time.The bank has also acquired several other regional banks especially in the region of Turkey and Egypt where the National Bank of Kuwait was able to acquire 30 bank branches. The National Bank of Kuwait uses a centralized infrastructure of Information Technology (IT) to support the growing business demands of the banking system in Kuwait and all around the world (Microsoft Case Studies, 2011).

Organizational Context

The primary data centre of the National Bank of Kuwait is located in Kuwait where the company has its headquarters. By the year 2009, the National Bank of Kuwait faces some challenges with the IT infrastructure that proved to be disastrous for the company. The company is looking for the redesign of their IT infrastructure that could effectively support their operations. The design of a new infrastructure is not an easy task and the National Bank of Kuwait has realized the issues pertaining to the designing of new IT infrastructure that includes the constraints of electricity in Kuwait which proves to be a major challenge that could affect the server based model of the National Bank of Kuwait. In this study, the machine metaphor and culture metaphors are used to analyze the problem situation of the National bank of Kuwait and the identification of possible solutions to the problem.

Problem Situation

There are some issues with the IT infrastructure of the organization that are required to be solved by the managers inorder to ensure the smoothness of operations of the National Bank of Kuwait. Machine Metaphor and Culture Metaphors are used to analzye the problem.

Machine Metaphor

Machine metaphor is used within the systems that are closed and have ...