This paper explores a technique for developing a conference (or class) schedule that maximizes the servicing of participant requests for sessions. Data regarding participant interests are collected before the time the schedule is generated. The problem contains two principal parts: (1) to...

Services and products possess various attributes, some being more important than others. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is a technique for prioritising attributes based on measurements of performance and importance. A weakness of IPA is that it conceptualises attribute importance as a...

The literature on organization design has been dominated by descriptive models in its dealing with structure and operations. This paper takes an alternative view advocating the use of a normative model to be used in the design of service organizations. This model sees the extent of customer...

This research provides an empirically derived measurement model for customer contact, a widely used construct in service management. The model was created by applying two psychometric scaling techniques, Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) and the method of paired comparisons, and Content Analysis,...

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Delivering high quality service during the service encounter is central to competitive advantage in service organizations. However, achieving such high quality while controlling for costs is a major challenge for service managers. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach for...