A review of service quality and service delivery: Towards a customer co-production and customer-integration approach

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide researchers with an overview of the service quality and delivery domain, focussing on the inclusion of customer co-production and customer integration. Specifically, this paper concentrates on service quality (including quality measurement), the service environment, controls and their consequences. Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive review of the literature is conducted, analysed and presented. Findings: The review shows that service delivery is both complex and challenging, particularly when considering the unique characteristics of services and the high level of customer involvement in their creation. The facilitation, transformation and usage framework identifies how failures can occur at each stage of service delivery, beginning with the characteristics of the service environment, while control theory offers insights into the formal and informal controls that may be applied in the facilitation and transformation stages, which may reduce the likelihood or extent of such failures. Originality/value: Despite the fact that it is widely accepted that service quality is an antecedent to customer satisfaction, it is surprising that this customer co-creation aspect has been largely neglected in the extant literature. As such, the role that customer co-production plays in service quality performance has been examined in this paper. It is hoped that this examination will enhance both theoretical and practical understanding of service quality. It would be useful to find modern tools that can help in improving service quality performance

Improving Immigrant Access to Workforce Services: Partnerships, Practices & Policies

This report presents the challenges and shares actionable ideas on how the immigrant-serving and workforce development fields could partner to improve policies and practices connecting immigrants to skill-building and career-advancement opportunities. Immigrants and their families make up 13% of the overall population in the United States and 16% of the labor force. However, immigrants are much more likely than the native population to live in poverty and be underserved by our public workforce system.The research, conducted by the Aspen Institute's Workforce Strategies Initiative, helps us understand how workforce- and immigrant-focused organizations intersect and could work together. While forming robust partnerships is still in the preliminary stages, a few strong examples of such partnerships exist, and more are emerging with various modest investments. The report aims to contribute to the emerging national conversation about these issues

A construct of sequential service quality in service encounter chains

Studies of the construct of service quality have traditionally been undertaken from the perspective of the service receiver. More recently, research has focused on both the service provider\u27s perspective and the service receiver\u27s perspective. In addition, there have also been some triadic network approaches to the study of service quality. However, there has been very little research into sequential service quality in service-encounter chains (that is, consecutive service performances in a series of service encounters). The incorporation of connected service encounters in services management can improve understanding of sequential service quality in service-encounter chains. This paper provides a customized construct of sequential service quality and&nbsp; highlights the importance of time, context, and performance threshold in service-encounter chains. Furthermore, the paper presents a customized six-dimensional construct of sequential service quality.<br /

A Dynamic Multimedia User-Weight Classification Scheme for IEEE_802.11 WLANs

In this paper we expose a dynamic traffic-classification scheme to support multimedia applications such as voice and broadband video transmissions over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Obviously, over a Wi-Fi link and to better serve these applications - which normally have strict bounded transmission delay or minimum link rate requirement - a service differentiation technique can be applied to the media traffic transmitted by the same mobile node using the well-known 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) protocol. However, the given EDCA mode does not offer user differentiation, which can be viewed as a deficiency in multi-access wireless networks. Accordingly, we propose a new inter-node priority access scheme for IEEE 802.11e networks which is compatible with the EDCA scheme. The proposed scheme joins a dynamic user-weight to each mobile station depending on its outgoing data, and therefore deploys inter-node priority for the channel access to complement the existing EDCA inter-frame priority. This provides efficient quality of service control across multiple users within the same coverage area of an access point. We provide performance evaluations to compare the proposed access model with the basic EDCA 802.11 MAC protocol mode to elucidate the quality improvement achieved for multimedia communication over 802.11 WLANs.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC

Factors affecting motivation in the public sector under the context of self-determination theory and public service motivation : the case of the Hellenic Agricultural Insurance Organization (H.A.I.O.)

Purpose: The main aim of this study is to develop and test a conceptual framework that explores the factors that motivate employees in public services. The study is based on two theories, the Self Determination Theory (SDT), and the Public Service Motivation (PSM). Design/methodology/approach: The empirical testing of the proposed conceptual framework was conducted using a structured questionnaire that was distributed to 390 employees of a Greek public sector organization, namely the Hellenic Agricultural Insurance Organization (Η.Α.Ι.Ο.). The population of the study consists of 489 public servants. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique were used to test the research hypotheses. Findings: Results highlight, among others, the importance of work autonomy and job satisfaction and their impact on employees’ intrinsic motivation. Moreover, empirical results emphasize the need for building a supportive work environment that contributes on employee satisfaction, autonomy and relatedness. Results also confirm the existence of a positive relationship among intrinsic motivation, public service motivation and job performance. Practical implications: The findings suggest that in cases where external incentives are significantly limited (e.g., in the public sector), it is crucial to consider the importance of promoting and supporting intrinsic motivation and support public service incentives. Originality/value: Self-determination theory seems to be poorly explored in the Greek public sector, and moreover, in economies and countries with similar characteristics. Therefore, it seems crucial to increase the knowledge about the real value of self-determination theory as a work motivation approach, especially in the public sector. Finally, research results may help supervisors and business leaders to implement appropriate systems and practices that promote a supportive environment in the workplace.peer-reviewe

Measurement and effects of teaching quality : an empirical model applied to masters programs

This study applies service quality and customer satisfaction theory to the field of education, and particularly to postgraduate studies. It examines the impact of multiple indicators of teaching quality on student satisfaction. For this purpose, a model is proposed and verified in which the teaching quality indicators are antecedents of the student's satisfaction with the professor and the program. An innovative aspect of the study is the introduction into education of the concept of customer loyalty as a result of satisfaction. In its analysis of these aspects, the study draws on data from a survey conducted among students of two business administration programs. A total of 2,446 valid questionnaires were obtained. In the proposed model, the latent variable, student satisfaction, is considered to be a consequence of the combined effect of satisfaction with certain aspects of teaching quality and the cause of the variation in the indicators on the satisfaction measurement scale. The model was tested by using the MIMIC [Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes] structural equation technique