TY - JOUR
T1 - Does management's approach impede service quality?
AU - Soltani, Ebrahim
AU - Barnes, Bradley
AU - Syed, Jawad
AU - Liao, Ying Ying
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council grant to the lead author (grant number RES-000-22-4227).
PY - 2012/7/1
Y1 - 2012/7/1
N2 - The primary aim of this article is to examine the impact of management's approach on the effectiveness of service quality operations. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with multiple managerial actors at different hierarchical levels and archival sources, the findings suggest two alternative paths of management's approach regarding service quality. One of the paths distils customer confidence, aims to fulfil customer requirements as well as the strategic and potential intentions within the organisation. The other represents more of a short-term approach for managing service quality, which only demonstrates some aspects of customer satisfaction at the time when the customer interacts with the service provider. In the latter, as our evidence showed, the service provider could fail to build customer loyalty and face customer boycott. The findings highlight a fundamental need for management across different hierarchical levels to adjust their approach to encompass the entirety of service quality operations, if service quality practices are to result in employee satisfaction and desirable customer experience.
AB - The primary aim of this article is to examine the impact of management's approach on the effectiveness of service quality operations. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with multiple managerial actors at different hierarchical levels and archival sources, the findings suggest two alternative paths of management's approach regarding service quality. One of the paths distils customer confidence, aims to fulfil customer requirements as well as the strategic and potential intentions within the organisation. The other represents more of a short-term approach for managing service quality, which only demonstrates some aspects of customer satisfaction at the time when the customer interacts with the service provider. In the latter, as our evidence showed, the service provider could fail to build customer loyalty and face customer boycott. The findings highlight a fundamental need for management across different hierarchical levels to adjust their approach to encompass the entirety of service quality operations, if service quality practices are to result in employee satisfaction and desirable customer experience.
KW - case study research
KW - managing service quality
KW - quality management
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84861354883&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09537287.2011.640041
DO - 10.1080/09537287.2011.640041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84861354883
SN - 0953-7287
VL - 23
SP - 523
EP - 540
JO - Production Planning and Control
JF - Production Planning and Control
IS - 7
ER -