بهره وری خدمات و کیفیت خدمات: تجارت کردن ضروری؟

This paper is about service productivity and perceived service quality. Both a high service productivity and a high customer perceived quality are two main drivers of good performances in service companies and they simultaneously occur as a consequence of a synergy of several drivers such as employees' competences and motivation, organizational efficiency, technical devices availability, information technologies employment, etc. In scientific literature a trade-off between productivity and perceived service quality is asserted and several cases derived both by market observations and academic research could bear such trade-off out. But, is it possible to state that, under some circumstances, such a trade-off between productivity and perceived service quality could be avoided? And if yes, why such certified substitution should not work? In this paper, in order to trace some theoretical answer to the above questions, a managerial model based both on service science and production economics will be proposed. The model aims to find out some key causes that allow to explain the foundations of the mentioned trade-off and the potential conditions for its overcoming; moreover, such model will be employed in order to integrate services' productivity function with new variables and to provide some managerial guidelines for improving service management.

In manufacturing literature, productivity can be defined as the ratio between outputs, produced through a production process, and inputs used for producing such outputs. According to the above definition, outputs increase, equal inputs – or inputs decrease, equal outputs – is a proxy indicator of a technical efficiency improvement; the underlining assumption for effectiveness of such indicator, as a productivity measurement, is the postulation of constant quality of outputs (Gronroos and Ojasalo, 2004). It is possible to assume that a change in production productivity measured by outputs that increase equal inputs – or inputs that decrease equal outputs – represents an effective improvement only if quality of outputs is unvaried with respect to the situation before the change. In manufacturing field both technological innovations and learning curves dynamics could cause and probate such an assumption of constant quality of outputs. For services an optimal balance between service productivity and perceived service quality – in a service company customer perceived quality is equivalent to output quality – is gained when a company is able to provide the highest perceived service quality (HPSQ) to its customers under a condition of technical efficiency (TE) ( Gronroos and Ojasalo, 2004). A service provider characterized by such parameters – both the HPSQ and TE – could be defined as an efficient service provider (ESP) and for it an increase in its productivity could cause a reduction in its perceived service quality: for example, an efficient medical center, characterized by technical efficiency, can improve its productivity only reducing the time devoted to each medical but it, at the same time, could reduce quality perceived by its patients about its medical accuracy, thus impacting, in the long run, on the economic results of the center. Actually, assuming that none of the technological, organizational and business model innovations will occur, an increase in medical center productivity should be gained only by reducing time devoted to its medicals (service units) and, consequently, impacting on customers' perceived quality. According to the most recent literature, productivity represents a more complex construct in service industries than in manufacturing. For an ESP a productivity improvement, expressed in traditional manufacturing fashion, can even involve a reduction in its perceived service quality, as the above example of medical center shows. Thus, considering the specificity of service firms, a new productivity concept has been developed for them: service productivity (SP) depends jointly on technical efficiency (internal efficiency) and on perceived service quality (external efficiency); moreover since a company aptitude to dimension its internal resources (human and organizational) to its market demand (capacity efficiency) impacts on its internal efficiency and consequently on customers' perceived service quality, the right dimensioning of internal resources to market demand is another key variable of a service productivity function ( Gronroos and Ojasalo, 2004). Thus equation(1) View the MathML sourceSP=f(internalefficiency,externalefficiency,capacityefficiency), Turn MathJax on where, in the short run: • internal efficiency⁎external efficiency=k, • and capacity efficiency is considered as given (1). According to service productivity function (1), and as the medical center example shows, a trade-off between internal efficiency and external efficiency exits for service sector: an improvement in internal efficiency could determine a reduction in external efficiency that is on its perceived service quality (Gronroos and Ojasalo, 2004). The aim of this paper is to analyze such trade-off between service productivity and perceived service quality and to understand both the conditions under which it works and if it is possible try to solve it, in order to present a more complete productivity function with regard to (1), and to provide some managerial guidelines for improving both perceived service quality and productivity. Since the paper's aim is, primarily, to highlight the settings triggering service productivity and service quality trade-off, and to test its overcoming sustainability or, more specifically, the conditions under which it is outwit, in order to get such goal an explorative research approach has been selected. Our research has been founded on an in-depth examination of scientific literature in the field of service management, production economics and human resource efficiency; then interviews and discussions with a non-probabilistic sample, determined through a convenience sampling approach, and a case study will provide some empirical evidences and supports for the findings proposed in the paper. The convenience sample is composed by 197 MBAs' (Master Business Administration) students; they are managers and employees in the service sector, aged between 25 to 55 years, and were interviewed during the time period 2004–2010. The case study has been employed in two branches of an international bank. The paper is organized as follows. In the next sections an analysis of economic literature about service quality and service productivity will be provided in order to build a service performance matrix (SPM) able to analyze the trade-off to study (Section 2). Motivational approaches in human resource management (Section 3) and the relationships between human resources' motivation and operation management will be discussed (Section 4). In order to understand how it is possible to overcome the trade-off between productivity and service quality, a model will be proposed (Section 5) and its pertinence to different service typologies will be analyzed (Section 6). A case study will provide some empirical evidences about trade-off overcoming sustainability (Section 7), and case study limitations and managerial implications of SPM will be discussed (Section 8) before concluding (Section 9) the paper.

To sum up, ‘Passion for Compassion’ and ‘Dare to Care’ have been two themes of the Academy of Management meeting in 2010. This choice underlines the importance to include broad human, ethic and interdisciplinary dimensions in management, engineering and production economics disciplines. Moreover recently, International Journal of Production Economics planned a call for paper on the theme of compassionate operation. Our paper positions itself in this new researches streaming and tries to provide new insight and perspectives in service productivity and service management literature. Productivity, in its genesis, is a technical concept born in manufacturing field and has been studied mainly in a production economics perspective. Several researches had been devoted to productivity in service industries and they enlarged productivity function, and do not consider it as output–input ratio but as a function of output–input ratio, customer satisfaction and capacity optimization. In this paper, through an explorative research approach, we consider productivity as a function of four variables (internal efficiency, external efficiency, capacity efficiency and meaning efficiency) and suggest how such productivity function is able to provide a new motivational dimension able to overcome service productivity and service quality trade-off. Promising development of this research could be further tests of paper framework through analytical experimentations in organizations or by employing experimental economics methodologies.