Search results

Healthcare service quality in the USA has gained importance under value-based payment models. Providing feedback to front-line staff is a vital component of managing service performance, but complex organizational dynamics can prevent effective communication. This work explored the performance management of appointment desk staff at Mayo Clinic Arizona, identified barriers to effective management and sought to standardize the process for monitoring service performance.

Multiple data sources, including qualitative inquiry with 31 employees from the primary care and surgery departments, were used. The research was conducted in two phases – facilitated roundtable discussions with supervisors and semi-structured interviews with supervisors and staff six months after implementation of service standards. Participants were probed for attitudes about the service standards and supervisor feedback after implementation.

While all staff indicated a positive work environment, there was an unexpected and pervasive negative stigma surrounding individual feedback from one’s supervisor. Half the participants indicated there had been no individual feedback regarding the service standards from the supervisor. Presenting service standards in a simple, one-page format, signed by both supervisor and the patient service representative (PSR), was well received.

Combining rapid-cycle quality improvement methodology with qualitative inquiry allowed efficient development of role-specific service standards and quick evaluation of their implementation. This unique approach for improving healthcare service quality and identifying barriers to providing individual feedback may be useful to organizations navigating a more value- and consumer-driven healthcare market.

Previously, a questionnaire survey was conducted and it was found that some management practices were more influential to service quality than others. The purpose of this paper is to identify in more detail the reasons behind the survey findings.

Eighteen in‐depth interviews into a range of management practices which support service quality were conducted.

It was found that there were difficulties in implementing some of the management practices due to the type of staff employed and to the nature of tasks undertaken.

As the purpose of this research is to facilitate interpretation of the quantitative data, the investigation did not go in detail beyond mass and technological services. Hence, individual organisational characteristics, individual circumstances, or details of the service offered to customers are not considered beyond the category of either mass or technological services.

The paper identifies that the actual contribution from different management practices to service quality varied, and explains the reasons behind the diverse contributions in each type of service business.

Explores the extent to which the construct service quality plays in an internal marketing setting. A conceptual model known as the “Internal Service Quality Model” was designed based on the original “GAP Model” developed by Parasuraman. The model evaluated the dimensions, and their relationships, that determine service quality among internal customers (front‐line staff) and internal suppliers (support staff) within a large service organisation, namely, Singapore Airlines. The dependent variable in this study was internal service quality (ISQ), while the independent variables were tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The results suggest that the perceptions and expectations of internal customers and internal suppliers play a major role in recognising the level of internal service quality perceived. The acceptance of the postulated hypotheses has confirmed the importance of the internal service quality construct, thus acknowledging the usefulness of the INTSERVQUAL instrument and the conceptualised Internal Service Quality Model proposed in this research study.

Over the past decade, SERVQUAL has emerged as perhaps the most popular standardized questionnaire to measure service quality. In this study, a conceptual model, INTSERVQUAL, was designed based on the original “Gap Model”, to explore the extent to which the construct service quality plays in an internal marketing setting. The research was conducted in a major international airline. The expectations and perceptions scales have emerged as measures with excellent internal consistency reliabilities. The two scales exhibited adequate validity as separate measures of front‐line staff (customer‐contact personnel) expectations of support services; and their perceptions of the support staff’s performance. The results indicated that the scales can be successfully used to assess the magnitude of the gap between front‐line staff perceptions and expectations.

The objective of this paper is to describe the teleological actions needed to assess and manage critical incidents that cause negative emotions in service encounters. Teleological actions are movements into the future that are believed to be move either towards a predictable/known or unpredictable/unknown state or condition. The authors distinguish between, define and apply three categories: transformative – ad hoc and present-based actions; formative – pre-determined and past-based actions; and rationalist – goal-directed and future-based actions.

A qualitative study, based upon a two-phase approach applying convenience and judgemental sampling, was used. Focussing on one teleological theory, a process of abductive matching was applied throughout the study. Abductive matching refers to recurring themes, patterns and categories that are uncovered through the iterative processes of analysis. The teleological framework structured and guided the data collection and empirical observations.

Seen through the perspective of teleological actions, the study enhances our understanding of the manner in which critical incidents generate negative emotions in service encounters. Through the same perspective, the investigation also reveals that the outcome of a negative service encounter depends upon the interactive interface between service provider and service receiver.

The teleological actions between service providers and service receivers in negative service encounters appear to be mediators between cause-and-effect on the one hand (critical incident and negative emotions) and a perceptual gap on the other (outcome of negative service encounter). The teleological perspective also provides numerous opportunities for further research in this area.

Managers should strive to understand the teleological actions potentially undertaken by service receivers, so that they can deal with the teleological actions of their front-line staff accordingly. The interactive interface between a service provider and a service receiver is crucial in assessing and managing critical incidents.

Based on teleological actions, the investigation provides both a valuable and complementary contribution on assessing and managing critical incidents and the negative emotions that are often triggered in the service-encounter interface between a service provider and a service receiver. Providers also need to educate their staff on what can occur and on how to react appropriately.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

Scans the top 400 management publications in the world to identify the most topical issues and latest concepts. These are presented in an easy‐to‐digest briefing of no more than 1,500 words.

Success in meeting customer's requirements can be affected by customer perception of front‐line staff. Many businesses are now building teams who will reflect the identities of their customer base and local community. Supershed DIY retailers B&Q are the first business to be studied to see how the gender of their front‐line staff affects the behavior of their customers. Incredible as it seems, this has never been studied before but the insights gained are a wake‐up call for retailers everywhere.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and investigate the contribution made from the estates services to the quality of the patient experience from the perspective of all estates staff ranging from front‐line staff to directors of estates and facilities. The work is exploratory in nature owing to no known earlier studies in this area.

A postal questionnaire is distributed to a non‐random self‐selecting group of National Health Service (NHS) estates staff – therefore those staff working in the areas of maintenance, engineering, building, gardening and general office estates management. A total of 920 questionnaires are distributed to the 46 NHS trusts. There are 202 responses, which is a return rate of 22 per cent.

It is clear that overall estates staff consider their job/service to be important to the patient experience, 94 per cent of respondents indicate they did. This is further confirmed by 82 per cent of estates line managers considering their job to be important to the patient experience. In terms of how estates feel they contribute to the patient experience, there is a range of responses, however the main reason highlighted is the recognition that the hospital could not function without the service being provided, i.e. the maintenance of essential services, water, power and the general infrastructure. Estates departments perhaps need on patient awareness of the services they provide and the importance of them in making the hospital function.

The results presented provide a useful insight into how estates departments in the NHS perceive their contribution to the patient experience. However, they are not without limitations. First, the sample size is relatively small; and second non‐random sampling techniques are used.

The findings suggest a number of avenues for future work. The most obvious would be to investigate the level of awareness from patients regarding estates services in the NHS.

This paper introduces the concept of “internal service recovery” defined as what the organisation does to make internal customers (front‐line employees), who have recovered external customers from service failure, feel less frustrated and more confident of their ability to deal with dissatisfied customers in the future. Internal service recovery often requires reducing employees’ feelings of low perceived control and helplessness. The results from an exploratory study of staff and managers in four branches of a UK bank shows that although the concept and practice of external service recovery is well understood, internal reovery is not. It is suggested that the “traditional” ingredients of external recovery (response, information, action and compensation) may be appropriate for the internal customer. It is also suggested that the passive, alienated employee behaviour associated with “learned helplessness” may need to be addressed through additional interventions. The purpose of the paper is to encourage both researchers and managers to examine how the effectiveness of internal service recovery affects external service recovery and the satisfaction of both employees and customers.

This paper considers the difficulties involved in training a group of UK public library workers up to the level of computer literacy associated with the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL). The policy context for this study is provided by the need for ICT (information and communications technology) training that was recognised by the Library Information Commission (LIC) reports of 1997 and 1998. It was decided to investigate the efficiency of this £20 million training programme by means of a longitudinal study conducted over four years, starting in 1999, that followed a group of 20 librarians working in the north‐west of England. To further illuminate the results, a similar cohort of librarians was tracked in east Finland, over the same time period. The results suggest that the LIC's aim of getting all library staff up to the ECDL has not been realised. Furthermore, there has been a significant difference in terms of training between professional and front‐line staff. At the end of the paper, some suggestions are made that might enhance the efficacy of such training programmes, especially in terms of financial incentives.

While the term “entrepreneurship” was almost exclusively associated with private sector, it is now found with increasing frequency in the literature on the public sector and public administration. However, research on public entrepreneurs remains restricted to top and middle managers and elected politicians and focuses on policy promotion and initiatives concerning public sector transformation. The perpose of the present article is to extend earlier research to the empirical assessment of entrepreneurial behaviour among front line staff in the Greek public sector.

A scale of entrepreneurial behaviour was assessed. A short, self‐report questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 237 public servants working at prefecture level, which is the second level of government in Greece. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the entrepreneurial behaviour scale contributed to the formation of a hierarchical factor structure with a super‐ordinate entrepreneurial behaviour factor and three lower‐level factors.

The reported research relied on self‐reports and on a sample from the Greek public sector. Moreover, data are cross‐sectional and alternatives relationships may exist. Future research should be multinational and longitudinal to test the assumptions of the present study and should encompass variables of actual entrepreneurial behaviour.

The research findings demonstrate that the concept of “public entrepreneurship” is relevant for the average civil servant and reveals facets of entrepreneurial behaviour of front line staff. Moreover, the study finds evidence that there is a positive correlation between the supportive context, as expressed by encouragement of initiatives and access to managerial information, and entrepreneurial behaviour among public servants. As a result, policy makers should take the appropriate measures to build a supportive context for public entrepreneurship.

The research findings are original and unique and are based on established models and theories from the literature on private sector entrepreneurship. The results are based on a sample of public servants working in different prefectures in Greece. In addition, respondents come from different organisational units across each prefecture. The research findings are useful to academics and to policy makers interested in fostering public entrepreneurship.