Assessing the Role of Automation in Managing of Iranian E-banking and its Impact on Social Benefit
Banks in the field of commercial developments have attention to create structural changes in the receiving and payment systems and also have facilities in services process to customers. In fact we can claim one of the reasons of general tendency to electronic business is the banks managers’ attention to the importance and necessity of this phenomenon, thus have led to their trend and serious attention for providing banking structure, based on electronic method. What banking services makes it different in comparing with other conventional methods for using E-Banking systems, is, quantitative and qualitative expansion in customer service. In other words, E-Banking, prepares the situation to customer till have wider and more diverse services. Furthermore, time and spatial dimension will not have effect in reducing or increasing services to customers. Also the customer can control his/her financial activities in every time and everywhere without attending in bank’s branches. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the status of banking automation, its social and organizational consequences in Iranian E-banking system, and providing appropriate recommendations.
Technological Innovation and the Adoption of Internet Banking in Oman
Omani banks continue to conduct most of their banking transactions using traditional methods. Given the prevalence of Internet technology adoption by the banking industry in developed countries, reasons for the lack of such innovation in developing countries such as Oman is of interest in any consideration of technological innovation. After providing some background on Internet banking, this article considers various factors that might act to determine whether a given technology is likely to be adopted by the banking industry in a developing country such as Oman, by comparison with a developed country like Australia. Data was collected from interviews with bank managers in each country, based on a consideration of each bank manager’s perceptions of four factors that might affect their decisions to adopt, or not adopt Internet technologies: Relative Advantage, Organisational Performance, Customer/ Organisational Relationship and Ease of Use. It thus addresses the question: What are the enablers and the inhibitors of Internet technology adoption in the Omani banking industry compared with those in the Australian banking industry?
Perspectives on the Concept of Social Control
Even a cursory examination of the concept of social control will confront an apparently insurmountable problem: No definition of the term is agreed upon by sociologists. This is puzzling not only because social control is one of the most widely used terms in the sociological lexicon, but also because there is evidence of a revival of interest in the topic (e.g. Janowitz 1978; Zald 1978; Roucek 1978; Goode 1978). The term social control is found in three contexts in the sociological literature: (a) as a description of a basic social process or condition; (b) as a mechanism to insure compliance with norms; and (c ) as a method by which to study (or to interpret data about) social order. The first conception, associated closely with classical sociological theory, served as the dominant perspective during the first part of this century. The second has its roots in classical theory but is a more modem innovation, coming to fruition in the 1950s. The third is temporally the most recent but represents in many ways a return to earlier views. None of these perspectives has been the object of rigorous conceptual or theoretical development (cf. Gibbs 1981). As a result, social control is a sensitizing concept that "gives the user a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances," rather than a definitive concept that "refers precisely to what is common to a class of objects by aid of a clear definition . . . " (Blumer 1969: 147-48). This lack of agreement on a definition is related ultimately to the absence of an adequate theory of social control-i.e. a theory of the origin and maintenance of norms, and the relationship between norms and sanctions.