Cityside financial services

1. What is the root cause of the problems that Cityside financial services are encountering? * The two different sales divisions were Retail Operations and External Deposits. Retail Operations was comprised of mostly local African Americans, and the External Deposits was made up of white middle class college students. * Customers were categorized into two categories: local and wealthy cliental. The products were promoted and tailored to one of the categories and were not cross-promoted. * Retail clients felt overshadowed and less important than the External Deposits rich white clients. * The service overlaps and lack of coordination between the two units began to compromise the efficiency of Cityside. * When Wilkins asked for candid feedback from the employees it quickly became rooted in race * Senior management had a cultural bias towards whites. The black employees thought they were respected in the company, but they did not believe their coworkers valued their contributions.

2. What needs to change in each organization to address these problems? * Integrating functions? * By integrating functions into one sales division there should be more transparency and communication. * This does not address the issue of race in the Cityside company culture, and the duties could still be split upon what seem to be racial lines. * Top-down restructuring? * This approach could help show employees that top management officials are committed to changing the company culture by implementing it among themselves first. * The actual restructuring of top management could prove difficult to find qualified members to fill the positions. * Restructuring top management with the mindset of increasing minority representation could evoke the problems of affirmative action