Offers a general historical analysis of the development of public service provision in Britain. First discusses the slow emergence of industrialism in Britain, then discusses the development of social services in this context. Suggests that there are three significant stages in development:...

To succeed, service businesses must offer their customers high‐quality, reliable service. However, many of the characteristics that make services unique also make it difficult to ensure consistently correct performance. To promptly identify and correct errors when they occur, service managers...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine how service enablers such as resource management and human resource management practices, identified in prior research as vital, influence both conformance quality and productivity performance. The paper also aims to study how the level of...

Purpose – This paper seeks to study the impact of adopting quality orientation as a business operations philosophy to enhance a firm's performance. Specifically, it aims to identify various indicators that make up a quality orientation philosophy, and to research their role in improving...

Purpose – Failures represent an important source of variability in service operations and a major performance challenge. As a consequence, the effective management of failures is a prerequisite to achieve lean services. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the operational perspective of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address, by integrating the self-service technology (SST) adoption and technology acceptance models, the service quality of self-service technologies (SQ-SSTs) by empirically testing a comprehensive model that capture the antecedents and consequences...

As part of the business strategy in a competitive environment, for an organization to induct information technology (IT) appropriately, business process reengineering (BPR) must be conducted. We propose a process that incorporates both management information systems and strategic management...

Purpose – Information analysis tools enhance the possibilities of firm competition in terms of knowledge management. However, the generalization of decision support systems (DSS) is still far away from everyday use by managers and academicians. This paper aims to present a framework of...

Investigates the three significant implications of the service factory for manufacturing managers: (1) the service factory is strategic in nature, (2) the dimensions and attributes of the service factory should be addressed, and (3) managerial aspects must be included.