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Quality Management in Service Firms Sustaining STR
Quality Management in Service Firms Sustaining STR
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Sustaining
Quality management in service structures of
firms: sustaining structures of TQS
total quality service
389
Atul Gupta, Jason C. McDaniel and S. Kanthi Herath
School of Business and Economics, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg,
Virginia, USA
Abstract
Purpose – Proposes developing a conceptual model that can be used in understanding the
relationships between sustaining structures that support the total quality service (TQS) philosophy
and customer satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach – Integrating the SERVQUAL instrument and other work in the
service quality literature, especially the Deming management model, this paper develops a model for
understanding the interactions between customer satisfaction and sustaining structures.
Findings – This conceptual paper develops three constructs: leadership, organizational culture and
employee commitment, which are very important in achieving total quality service objectives. The
proposed model links these three constructs with business processes and total quality service.
Research limitations/ implications – It is not an empirical investigation of customer satisfaction
and sustaining structures. The paper does not review in detail the impact of the three constructs on
business processes. A researcher who plans to do a customer satisfaction study could benefit from the
proposed model as it will provide valuable insights about the interactions between customer
satisfaction and sustaining structures.
Originality/value – This paper provides an important conceptual framework for evaluating the
relationships between customer satisfaction and sustaining structures.
Keywords SERVQUAL, Customer satisfaction, Quality management, Customer service quality
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Over the past few years, the service sector has become the dominant element in many
economies including the economy of the USA. In many industrialized countries, service
sector accounted for more that 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). For
instance, in 1989 the service sector accounted for 69 percent of the USA’s GDP; 67
percent of France’s GDP; 62 percent of the UK’s GDP; 60 percent of Germany’s GDP;
and 56 percent of Japan’s GDP (World Bank, 1991). These figures represent only the
service sector’s contribution (Ghobadian et al., 1994) and in addition, many
manufacturing companies have started to provide services traditionally not
provided by them (Douglas and Fredendall, 2004). The employment in service
industries in the USA has also increased from 30 percent in 1900 to over 85 percent in
2000 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002). The service sector in many economies Managing Service Quality
embraces a diverse and complex range of organizations and enterprises including: Vol. 15 No. 4, 2005
pp. 389-402
.
national and local government: for example, education, health, social security, q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0960-4529
police, the military, transport, legal, information, and credit; DOI 10.1108/09604520510606853
MSQ .
non-profit private services: for example, charities, churches, research
15,4 foundations, mutual societies, and art foundations; and
.
for-profit private services: for example, utilities, hotels, airlines, architects,
restaurants, solicitors, retailers, entertainment, banks, insurance companies,
advertising agencies, consultancy firms, market research companies, and
communications (Ghobadian et al., 1994, p. 43).
390
Customer service has become a distinct component of both product and service sectors
and with the developments in information technology many business find demanding
and knowledgeable customers. The worldwide trend toward service quality was
initiated in the 1880s when businesses realized that a quality product, in itself, is not
guaranteed to maintain competitive advantage (van der Wal et al., 2002). Many
researchers recognize that service quality can bring an organization a lasting
competitive advantage (Moore, 1987; Lewis, 1989). Quality of services can be the
difference between success and failure in both service and manufacturing firms. Service
quality, customer satisfaction and customer value have become the main concern of
both manufacturing and service organizations in the increasingly intensified
competition for customers in today’s customer-centered era (Wang et al., 2004).
As a result, many organizations are paying increasing attention to improve service
quality. In some manufacturing industries “service quality” is considered a more
important order winner than “product quality” (Ghobadian et al., 1994, p. 43). Service
quality improvements will lead to customer satisfaction and cost management that
result in improved profits (Stevenson, 2002). Literature suggests that total quality
philosophy can be usefully deployed in the service sector too. As an initial step in an
empirical investigation of service quality management, this study incorporates the
SERVQUAL model and the total quality management (TQM) model, and develops
several hypotheses for empirical testing.
Figure 1.
Model of total quality
service
This model focuses on customer needs and expectations. The firm should gain an Sustaining
understanding of customer needs and expectations before designing and structures of
implementation of services quality improvements. The firm then should establish
sustaining structures for organizational culture, leadership and employee commitment, TQS
which are the building blocks of a good total quality service program. Customer
satisfaction and expectations are attitudes and they can easily be changed under
different circumstances. Thus, the model exhibits a two-way flow between customer 395
needs and expectations and the three constructs. This model highlights the feedback
loop that affects the three constructs. A well-established leadership system, an
organizational culture and a team of committed employees will lead to improved
business processes. Improved business processes will result in improvements in
service quality. This can be an improvement in service performance outcomes or
cost-based values. Finally, improved levels of service quality will lead to high levels of
customer satisfaction.
Hypotheses
In this section, we observe the relationships between the constructs and develop three
hypotheses regarding some underlying structures that support total quality service:
H1. The effective implementation and sustainment of TQS will be positively
correlated with an organizational culture that is pervasively quality focused.
H2. Effective TQS will be positively correlated with a strong, strategic-minded
leader or leadership team.
H3. Effective TQS deployment and maintenance will be positively correlated with
a total commitment from all employees of the firm.
This paper will critically examine TQS in the context of the above explicated
hypotheses, and conclusions will be drawn that contribute to a better understanding of
the under girding structures of TQS.
Conclusion
The model of TQS has become increasingly relevant in modern service firms, because
it focuses on rigorously analyzing and continuously improving customer-oriented
service processes. The ultimate ends of the TQS philosophy are the achievement of
short and long term financial goals, the realization of increased market share, and the
creation a sustainable competitive advantage. TQS is a comprehensive methodology,
which engages crucial elements of the firm toward a vision of delivering increasingly
high quality services to consumers. It was hypothesized that a quality focused
organizational culture, a strategically inclined leadership team, and a fully committed
employee population, as “sustaining structures” of TQS, would be positively correlated
with the achievement and preservation of a TQS environment. The contemporary
literature supports these three hypotheses, and it suggests that the human issues
involved with service delivery appear to be the best predictors of whether a TQS
environment will flourish within a given organization. Within the literature, there Sustaining
appears to be an underlying theme that professional camaraderie, trust, and structures of
interdependence among employees set the stage for superior service delivery. In the
future, service firms must learn how to harness these soft issues in order to survive, TQS
and even thrive, in the prevailing markets.
An important contribution of the current research is the incorporation of TQM
models, especially the Deming management model and the SERVQUAL instrument for 399
doing research in service quality. Literature suggests that it is important for
researchers to incorporate the variables in the Deming management model into their
research about service quality as previous research observes that the Deming
management model is as applicable to services as it is to manufacturing. The
SERVQUAL criteria better serve the quality implementations in organizations.
Incorporation of these two models will give an important message to managers:
visionary leadership will be directly involved in all aspects of quality programs. This
research developed a model for TQS based on three major constructs: leadership
involvement, organizational culture, and committed employees. Future research will
empirically validate the use of the Deming management model, combined with the
SERVQUAL instrument in the service quality research. That will be the next step of
the current research.
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Ishikawa, K. (1989), Introduction to Quality Control, JUSE Press, Tokyo.
Juran, J.M. (Ed.) (1988), Quality Control Handbook, 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
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organisational analysis”, TQM Magazine, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 293-301.
402
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customer-based performance measure: an empirical examination of organizational barriers
using an extended service quality model”, Human Resource Management, Vol. 30 No. 3,
pp. 335-60.