The swings and roundabouts of innovating for quality in UK financial services

Recent organisational innovations including culture change, total quality m anagement (TQM) and business process re-engineering (BPR) promise enhanced employee commitment, empowerment improved communication, delayering, greate r flexibility through less bureaucracy and a more customer focused approach . By reference to four case studies within the UK financial services sector this article explores a number of contradictory dynamics which, whilst pos ing an obstacle to change, have tended to reproduce rather than challenge h istorical organisational conditions including hierarchy, bureaucracy and ma nagement's preoccupation with control. A situation of complexity arises whe re the old and new merge to reconstitute each other; such that innovation c an be understood as a series of 'swings and roundabouts'. This is not to su ggest that such innovations have no bearing on service quality but it is to highlight the perennial tensions which infuse the process and content of i nnovation.