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Case Study

Empowerment at Julius Baer

By Robert Hooijberg, Bruno Ambar, Olena Gorobets, Ulyana Laporte and Darius Vezeteu

11 pages

November 2020

Reference: IMD-7-2219

The case reveals the challenges faced by a traditional Swiss wealth management firm, Julius Baer, which is trying to modernize amidst the industry transforming changes in regulation and technology. At the same time, the bank needs to integrate the myriad of acquired cultures and address a sudden change in the top leadership. To achieve this, one of the directions initiated by the bank was to focus on empowering the middle-level management to enable them to operate more independently from senior management, decentralize decision-making and promote collaboration at all layers of the organization. To boost this initiative the bank introduced a customised firmwide training program for selected employees to develop their in-depth understanding of the leadership culture and learn other aspects to drive their teams’ performance. This case explores the experiences of three middle managers, with varied functions, years of experience and career trajectories who were asked to lead larger teams under this new style of organization.

Learning Objective

What does the term empowerment mean in the contextof organizational design?
Why does empowerment matter?
How should an organization empower its employees?
What are the conditions necessary for empowerment to succeed as a strategy?

Keywords

Empowerment, Cultural Change, Leadership, Strategy, Talent Management, Human Resources

Settings

World/global
Julius Bär Group, Finance and Insurance, Banking
2018 - 2019

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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