Corporate banking: the strategic impact of boundary spanner effectiveness

Abstract

Banks’ structural re-organisation with centralised units for increased efficiency, technological advances, product diversification, and strategic initiatives to provide multiple products through "deep" multi-channel access, have challenged the relationship banking model at the heart of bank-company interaction. Paradox-ically, while improving the quality of transactional service, the "deep" relationship interface has under-mined the relationship manager role and caused confusion and antagonism among customers. The negative result is that customers have a more aggressive, trans-actional approach to purchasing decisions. The banks need to compromise between trans-actional and relational effort, and the "deep" multi-channel service delivery interface must have a re-invigorated relationship manager if banks are to retain their competitive advantage.