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1 – 10 of over 179000Therese Dwyer Løken, Marit Kristine Helgesen, Halvard Vike and Catharina Bjørkquist
New Public Management (NPM) has increased fragmentation in municipal health and social care organizations. In response, post-NPM reforms aim to enhance integration through service…
Abstract
Purpose
New Public Management (NPM) has increased fragmentation in municipal health and social care organizations. In response, post-NPM reforms aim to enhance integration through service integration. Integration of municipal services is important for people with complex health and social challenges, such as concurrent substance abuse and mental health problems. This article explores the conditions for service integration in municipal health and social services by studying how public management values influence organizational and financial structures and professional practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a case study with three Norwegian municipalities as case organizations. The study draws on observations of interprofessional and interagency meetings and in-depth interviews with professionals and managers. The empirical field is municipal services for people with concurrent substance abuse and mental health challenges. The data were analyzed both inductively and deductively.
Findings
The study reveals that opportunities to assess, allocate and deliver integrated services were limited due to organizational and financial structures as the most important aim was to meet the financial goals. The authors also find that economic and frugal values in NPM doctrines impede service integration. Municipalities with integrative values in organizational and financial structures and in professional approaches have greater opportunities to succeed in integrating services.
Originality/value
Applying a public management value perspective, this study finds that the values on which organizational and financial structures and professional practices are based are decisive in enabling and constraining service integration.
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Peter Nugus, Joanne Travaglia, Maureen MacGinley, Deborah Colliver, Maud Mazaniello-Chezol, Fernanda Claudio and Lerona Dana Lewis
Researchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants'…
Abstract
Purpose
Researchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants' views on structural options with discourses those views represent. As a case study, this paper aims to discern the extent to which and how conceptual underpinnings of stakeholder views on women's health contextualize different positions in the debate over the ideal structure of health services.
Design/methodology/approach
The researchers chose a self-standing, comprehensive women's health service facing the prospect of being dispersed into “mainstream” health services. The researchers gathered perspectives of 53 professional and consumer stakeholders in ten focus groups and seven semi-structured interviews, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis.
Findings
“Women's marginalization” was the core theme of the debate over structure. The authors found clear patterns between views on the function of women's health services, women's health needs, ideal client group, ideal health service structure and particular feminist discourses. The desire to re-organize services into separate mainstream units reflected a liberal feminist discourse, conceiving marginalization as explicit demonstration of its effects, such as domestic abuse. The desire to maintain a comprehensive women's health service variously reflected post-structural feminism's emphasis on plurality of identities, and a radical feminist discourse, holding that womanhood itself constituted a category of marginalization – that is, merely being at risk of unmet health needs.
Originality/value
As a contribution to health organizational theory, the paper shows that the discernment of discursive underpinnings of particular stakeholder views can clarify options for the structure of health services.
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Martin Böttcher and Stephan Klingner
The purpose of this paper is to provide a method that allows the decollating of formerly monolithic services into separate modules. To provide a semantically equivalent decomposed…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a method that allows the decollating of formerly monolithic services into separate modules. To provide a semantically equivalent decomposed model, structure and dependencies need to be defined. This fine‐grained image of the service allows an easier configuration and optimisation of single service modules and the service portfolio as a whole.
Design/methodology/approach
As an initial point of the work the authors conducted an extensive literature review, transferring insights from other domains that already make use of modularisation, such as industrial engineering and software engineering. The method developed on that basis was evaluated consecutively in use cases conducted with three companies.
Findings
As research in the fields of industrial and software engineering has shown, modularisation is a suitable approach for handling complexity. In this paper approaches and concepts of modularisation in industrial and software engineering were identified, adapted, and transferred into the field of service engineering, resulting in a method to modularise services. Additionally, potential positive effects of modularisation were compiled.
Research limitations/implications
The process of modularising in general requires three aspects: an architecture to describe the system's structure; interfaces to describe the interaction of modules; and standards for testing a module's conformity to the design rules. The method presented contributes primarily to the architecture. Further research efforts need to be conducted regarding aspects of interfaces and standards.
Practical implications
Nowadays, service providers are facing growing competition, which requires greater economical efficiency. Furthermore, customers increasingly demand individualised services, which can only be offered by applying the concepts of mass customisation. Both challenges can be met with the application of the concept of modularisation.
Originality/value
While service modularisation is increasingly discussed for the service domain, only little work has been done on presenting a method for a structured description. The provision of a method for describing the architecture of services and service portfolios can be used as the basis for further research regarding optimisation and configuration of service offers.
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Heiko Gebauer and Christian Kowalkowski
The paper aims to provide a better understanding of the interrelatedness of customer and service orientations in the organizational structures of capital goods manufacturing…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to provide a better understanding of the interrelatedness of customer and service orientations in the organizational structures of capital goods manufacturing companies.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative, multi‐case research design was employed using 36 European capital goods manufacturing companies.
Findings
This article explored four different patterns of how companies move from being product‐focused to service‐focused, and from having an organizational structure that is geographically focused to one that is customer‐focused. The four patterns are termed as follows: emphasizing service orientation, service‐focused organizational structure, emphasizing customer orientation, and customer‐focused organizational structure.
Research limitations/implications
Although the study is based on 36 case studies, the external validity (generalizability) of the findings could not be assessed accurately.
Practical implications
The description of the four organizational approaches offers guidance for managers to restructure their companies towards service and customer orientations.
Originality/value
The article links the relatively independent discussions of service and customer orientations in the context of organizational structures. The four patterns provide a better understanding of how capital goods manufacturers integrate increased customer and service focuses in their organizational structures.
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Levent Altinay and Hasan Evrim Arici
Drawing on chaos theory as an overarching approach, as well as guidelines from effectuation and transformative learning theories, this study aims to evaluate the changing…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on chaos theory as an overarching approach, as well as guidelines from effectuation and transformative learning theories, this study aims to evaluate the changing marketing channels in the hospitality industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aims to develop a conceptual framework that demonstrates the transformation of the marketing structure; in particular, the transformation of hospitality organizations, employees and customers.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses the hermeneutic method and conceptually evaluates the existing actors of the services marketing structure. It also discusses how to transform this structure into the new normal in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Findings
The findings of the study demonstrated that COVID-19 has resulted in changing marketing channels in the hospitality industry. These include external, internal, interactive and substitutional marketing channels. In response to these changes, the hospitality industry needs to adopt a more transformative marketing structure that requires the transformation of hospitality companies, employees and customers.
Research limitations/implications
The conceptualized transformation of the services marketing structure could help hospitality practitioners, employees and customers to understand the new normal and acquire new abilities, meanings, awareness and learning accordingly.
Originality/value
This study uses chaos, effectuation and transformative learning theories to reconceptualize the hospitality services marketing structure. The contribution of this paper lies in the conceptual pathways it suggests for transforming hospitality firms, employees and customers and for demonstrating their transformed roles and positions in the wake of the pandemic.
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Saad Zighan, Ziad Alkalha, David Bamford, Iain Reid and Zu'bi M.F. Al-Zu'bi
The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural changes needed for project-based organisations (PBOs) to synthesise their project operations and services following the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural changes needed for project-based organisations (PBOs) to synthesise their project operations and services following the servitisation strategy. It addresses the question of how PBOs should change their organisational structure fitting with service provision strategy.
Design/methodology/approach
This study followed an exploratory research method using a single in-depth case with evidence collected from 51 project managers from five different industry sectors: construction, oil and gas, IT, logistics and health care
Findings
Capitalising on organisational design theory, it has been found that successfully extending PBOs' outcomes into a system of both project output and extra services requires an adjustment of organisational structure that creates greater value for both companies and customers. This required adjustment has been divided into five main categories: (1) collaboration cross-project and customers; (2) flexible workflow, (3) decentralised decision-making, (4) wide span of control and (5) project governance. However, the findings indicate that success can only be ensured by particular mutually coordinated organisational designs with a suitable balance of products and services
Practical implications
This study presents vital indicators to PBOs practitioners when deploying servitisation within their operational strategy by adjusting the organisation's design.
Social implications
Servitisation could add both economic and social values for a diverse set of project stakeholders. However, the sustainability performance of servitisation in servitised project-based organisations is an outcome of reducing the discrepancy between project operation and service provision activities.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the body of knowledge and proposes a structural alteration process in PBOs to help align project operations and service provision activities. It explains how project-based organisations reconfigure their resources to provide services.
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Alfonso Marino and Paolo Pariso
Studying bus local public transport in 20 Italian provincial capitals, the present paper aims to identify organizational factors to assess different modes of service managerial…
Abstract
Purpose
Studying bus local public transport in 20 Italian provincial capitals, the present paper aims to identify organizational factors to assess different modes of service managerial steering.
Design/methodology/approach
Starting from bureaucratic theory, the paper analyzes four different modes of managerial steering in a regression model that accounts for several variables to assess the quality of Italian bus local public service transport.
Findings
The research shows that a network managerial structure performs significantly better than any other type. The 20 provincial capitals are homogeneous in relation to the variables considered. Italian bus local public transport is managed by bureaucratic public organizations. Adhocracy, as opposed to machine bureaucracy, seems to be the more effective mode of managerial steering for sector specific aspects in different capitals, despite that, network managerial structure – associated adhocracy – is used only in five capitals (main cities).
Originality/value
The paper highlights that the dichotomy between machine bureaucracy versus adhocracy shows interesting considerations related to different mode to management of Italian bus local public service transport.
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Chris Raddats and Jamie Burton
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how product‐centric businesses (PCBs), operating in a business‐to‐business environment, configure their organizations to align services…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how product‐centric businesses (PCBs), operating in a business‐to‐business environment, configure their organizations to align services strategy with structure. PCBs are companies whose businesses were historically based on the products, rather than services, they sold.
Design/methodology/approach
A UK‐based study was undertaken which comprised 40 interviews with managers in 25 PCBs from 11 sectors.
Findings
The main parameter which determines the appropriate organizational configuration for services within the PCB's structure is strategy. A new framework is developed from the empirical research which identifies a number of PCB configurations, based on PCBs' services strategies (services engagement, extension, penetration and transformation) and organizational structures aligned to strategic business units (SBUs), i.e. combined product and services, independent services and customer‐focused. The framework is used to show how organizational structure changes in response to changes in strategy. For certain strategies, the degree of product differentiation (services engagement) and future product sales potential (services transformation) also plays a part in determining strategy/structure configurations.
Research limitations/implications
Future research could confirm and compare the effectiveness of the identified structural configurations.
Practical implications
Managers in PCBs can identify appropriate organizational structures based on their services strategies and products. They can configure organizational design in light of evolving strategies that enable services‐led growth.
Originality/value
The paper presents a large pan‐sector study of organizational design for services as it related to PCBs, providing a new framework through which appropriate strategy/structure configurations can be identified and investigated as services‐led growth takes place.
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Rodrigo Valio Dominguez Gonzalez, Manoel Fernando Martins and Jose Carlos Toledo
The purpose of this paper is to analyze aspects of a network structure that promotes the practice of the knowledge management (KM) process in a service organization. The idea that…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze aspects of a network structure that promotes the practice of the knowledge management (KM) process in a service organization. The idea that knowledge is the main organizational resource has established itself in recent years, and knowledge has become more valuable in service organizations. Managing knowledge is therefore a central activity for organizations, and organizational structure must assist in this process.
Design/methodology/approach
The research strategy used is the simple case study, applied in a large multinational company in its unit established in Brazil.
Findings
The paper points out that the network structure has more flexible characteristics regarding formalization, centralization and integration. In the case study, this structure encourages the flow of knowledge through the interaction between individuals, and also across sectors of the organization, with the aid of a department coordinating the KM process, responsible for the storage and distribution of the best practices for future use in sites of service.
Research limitations/implications
The first point that should be highlighted is that the organization selected for the study is highly advanced in terms of KM, producing excessively positive results. Another negative aspect is related to the single case methodology. It does not allow extrapolation of the results to a larger population.
Practical implications
Within the context of industrial services highlights the service provider sites. The sites correspond to the service provider company frontline. In the sites occur the process of providing service, contact with the customer, improvement activities and, essentially, where knowledge is put in practice. To facilitate the storage and distribution of knowledge, the network structure presents a sector called Center of Excellence. The Center of Excellence aims to centralize the repository of knowledge, enabling the transfer of knowledge between different sites.
Originality/value
The main contribution is aimed at describing the characteristics of a network structure that stimulates the KM process in a service organization. This network of sites facilitates the flow of knowledge and the creative process.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the humanitarian service management categories that influence long-term transformation within complex community-based service ecosystems.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the humanitarian service management categories that influence long-term transformation within complex community-based service ecosystems.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilizes mixed methods to present a dynamic model that provides insight into the complexities of supplying, distributing and transporting charitable resources to underserved communities. The interdisciplinary study draws on the theory of service-dominant logic and service science, presents critical elements of transformative service research and uses system dynamics approach to propose a visual causal loop model.
Findings
This study develops a dynamic model for studying humanitarian service and value propositions in underserved communities. This paper combines the extant literature to emphasize key humanitarian service categories that influence, and are influenced by, service exchanges within community-based contexts.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is limited in providing quantitative methods in analyzing the case study data. However, the research is still helpful in providing acumen via the causal loop diagram to specifically look into each variable and see their cause and effect relationships in the community-based ecosystem. The research represents an opportunity to model the humanitarian aid and relief scenarios to help make more effective decision-making interventions.
Practical implications
The model serves as a managerial tool to determine critical services that optimize resource utilization within the community-based service ecosystems. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (HLSCM) solutions for community-based ventures.
Originality/value
This paper conceptualizes how the management of service-for-service exchanges, logistics services and charitable donation management provides transformational humanitarian services and value propositions within underserved communities. This study further provides fundamental contributions by addressing research gaps in the HLSCM domain by supporting service research and the community-based context.
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