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Worldwide, healthcare systems struggle to sustain the delivery of services at a time of increasing demand, limited resources and growing expectations from users, coupled with dealing with the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and the threat of other outbreaks. There has never been a more important time to sustain innovation and improvements. Using an illustrative case, the authors assess the application of two existing frameworks to identify the key propositions and dimensions required to deliver sustainable services.

This illustrative case study focuses on a service provided by a chronic disease, multidisciplinary community healthcare team in the UK. Experienced-based interviews were conducted with health professionals, patients and relatives to provide a rich account of a care pathway design. A high-level process map is used to visualise the key touch points.

The authors identify all seven propositions of the SERVICE framework being present along with additional dimensions relating to sustaining innovation and improvement.

This research is limited to a chronic disease care pathway. However, the authors believe the results could be applicable to other medical conditions, which are supported by a similar multi-disciplinary service delivery model.

The authors provide a sustainable public service operations SERVICES framework for health professionals and managers to consider when (re)designing care pathways.

This research contributes to the emerging discipline of public service operations research by empirically testing for the first time the SERVICE framework within healthcare. The authors have included additional factors associated with innovation and improvement and recommended further development of the framework to include factors, such as economic sustainability, highly relevant to the context of universal healthcare systems.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a contextualized local government case study of the application of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in conjunction with the Australian Business Excellence Framework (ABEF) to highlight the importance of a good strategic fit between LSS and organizational objectives before implementation.

A local government council is used in a case study-based approach. Organizational artefacts and documents were used for data collection in conjunction with interviews from senior executives within the organization.

Results indicate that when used in conjunction with the ABEF, LSS provides focus on organizational learning practices embedded within the implementation of continuous improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to discourse regarding the effective application and implementation of LLS in local government.

LSS tools and techniques are known to local government, but are applied in isolation of the overarching LSS framework. This paper emphasizes the importance of comprehensive implementation of these tools, guided by the inclusion of an external contextualized framework (ABEF) in conjunction with the LSS to achieve sustainable continuous improvement.

Business excellence frameworks are widely used in the public sector as a reference/means for improvement. This paper highlights the importance of LSS in operationalizing strategic direction provided by such frameworks and providing the focus on learning practices critical for sustainable improvements.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to study the environmental and competitive factors in the service organizations and second, to investigate the extent of effective implementation of quality improvement initiatives in different operational settings.

In this paper factor analysis is used to determine the underlying factors associated with the changes in the competitive environment. Proportional measures are used to study the implementation of quality improvement initiatives.

The paper finds that quality improvement initiatives are not implemented uniformly by all the service industries. Organizations implementing quality improvement initiatives face varying degrees of effectiveness. Positive operational and strategic outcomes have been observed by organizations implementing the quality improvement initiatives.

The results of this paper show that implementation of different types of quality improvement initiatives has a positive impact on operational and strategic aspects of service organizations.

The empirical investigation in this paper shows the practical and theoretical value of issues related to the performance of service organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on self‐assessment processes and to identify the difficulties, benefits and success factors of the European Foundation for Quality Management self‐assessment model, analysing the importance of follow‐up.

First, the paper carries out a literature review on self‐assessment, and then it uses the case study methodology based on ten services provided by a public university in Spain to identify difficulties, benefits and success factors of self‐assessment.

The findings show, first, what the literature suggests on self‐assessment in general and for higher education, and second, the difficulties, benefits and success factors and the importance of follow‐up for successful self‐assessment.

The paper provides a literature review on self‐assessment and lessons for managers from other universities, or other public sector organisations, who wish to know the difficulties, benefits and success factors, and the characteristics of follow‐up.

There are two objectives of this paper: first, to examine the application of lean production improvement techniques to the pure‐service context; and, second, to evaluate the contribution of lean production techniques to services marketing improvement.

Three case companies from the UK financial services sector are tracked through the process of lean improvement. Analysis of management change of a common process within each company forms the basis of the investigation.

Research findings highlight that, through the adoption of lean service tools, service call centres can serve the traditionally competing priorities both of operational cost reduction and of increased customer service quality. The lean approach is validated in the service context and proposed as a valuable addition to traditional service marketing approaches to services improvement.

The techniques described are easily replicable by academics, practitioners and managers and can be applied to a wide range of service centres or service businesses. In the contemporary marketplace, the difficulty of delivering quality service at any costs suggests that there is a great opportunity for the business that can deliver better service at a reduced cost of operation.

Lean transformation in the manufacturing sector is well established. However, the use of lean improvement tools to improve the quality of service delivery within the service sector is relatively new, with limited understanding of approaches and benefits in the academic or managerial arenas. In addition, coverage of lean tools is still rare in the marketing literature.

The paper aims primarily to describe and analyze how the strategic and operational relationship with independent dealers has been improved and controlled. The paper also aims to describe and analyze the improvement program that the dealerships have designed, adopted and implemented, and the improvements that have resulted from them.

The paper used an explorative, qualitative research approach using in‐depth interviews. In order to achieve a prior understanding of Volvo Trucks North America's (VTNA) quality improvements at the dealerships, three in‐depth interviews were conducted with dealers in the USA. One interview was held with a business manager responsible for five dealerships in the Chicago area, and another with the person in charge of the quality improvement program at the corporate level.

The key to success lies in the strategic and systematic implementation of the tools and programs with which VTNA has provided its dealerships. The following six factors were identified as key issues in VTNA's improvement program: customer focus, product quality, service experience, employees, information and communication technology, and customer satisfaction.

This paper illustrates how a large company such as Volvo is able to positively influence a large number of smaller companies using a small number of policies.

This paper aims to analyze high-quality papers on the research of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) for product and service quality improvement from 2009 to 2022, in order to fully understand their historical progress, current situation and future development trend.

This paper adopts the bibliometrics method to analyze the relevant literature, including publishing trend and citation status, regional and discipline area distribution, and influential publications. Secondly, the VOSviewer is used for literature co-citation analysis and keyword co-occurrence analysis to obtain the basic literature and research hotspots in this research field.

Firstly, the study finds that the number of publications basically shows an increasing trend, and those publications are mainly published in tourism journals. In addition, among these papers, China has the largest number of publications, followed by the USA and South Korea. Through co-citation analysis of literature and keyword co-occurrence analysis, 22 foundational papers and six main research topics are obtained in this paper. Finally, this paper elaborates on the development trend of the research topic and future research directions in detail.

This is the first paper that uses bibliometrics to analyze and review relevant researches on eWOM for product and service quality improvement, which is helpful for researchers to quickly understand its development status and trend. This review also provides some future research directions and provides a reference for further research.

Based on customer value theory, this paper aims to propose and test a conceptual model of the relationship between third‐party logistics (3PL) provider customer orientation and customer firm logistics improvement.

The 3PL provider customer orientation is conceptualized as a higher, second‐order construct made up of four key logistics‐driven first‐order indicators: service variety, information availability, timeliness, and continuous improvement. A survey‐based approach is utilized to collect data from managers at 124 manufacturing customer firms in the People's Republic of China; structural equation modeling is performed to assess measures and test the hypothesized relationships.

Chinese 3PL provider customer orientation significantly influences customer firm logistics improvement.

Findings are based on single source perceptual data from customer firm key respondents. Tests indicate that common method bias is not a problem.

At a time when market pressure is compelling Mainland Chinese 3PL providers to upgrade and expand service offerings, 3PLs with a strong customer orientation create significant value for customers through superior execution on key elements of logistics service.

The paper responds to calls for additional theoretically driven assessment of market orientation in logistics service provider firms by identifying explicit behavioral manifestations of 3PL customer orientation that enhance customer firm logistics performance.

The purpose of this paper is to present a study of how quality improvement tools and techniques are framed within healthcare settings.

The paper employs an interpretive approach to understand how quality improvement tools and techniques are mobilised and legitimated. It does so using a case study of the NHS Modernisation Agency Improvement Leaders' Guides in England.

Improvement Leaders' Guides were framed within a service improvement approach encouraging the use of quality improvement tools and techniques within healthcare settings. Their use formed part of enacting tools and techniques across different contexts. Whilst this enactment was believed to support the mobilisation of tools and techniques, the experience also illustrated the challenges in distributing such approaches.

The paper provides an important contribution in furthering our understanding of framing the “social act” of quality improvement. Given the ongoing emphasis on quality improvement in health systems and the persistent challenges involved, it also provides important information for healthcare leaders globally in seeking to develop, implement or modify similar tools and distribute leadership within health and social care settings.