Page 11 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Services Management

Notes 8. ...................... batch quantities, line balancing and stock control are just a few of the topics
widely taught then which bore little relation to the key issues faced by managers running
service operations.

In the 1970s there was an emerging recognition of service operations and the first two texts to
place some emphasis on the service sector were Johnson et al. and Buffa. Both books were
entitled Operations Management “to reflect the growing emphasis on the breadth of application of
production management concepts and techniques – non-manufacturing and service industries
as well as manufacturing”.
Service operations was a little slower off the mark, as service operations management was
“essentially Operations Research (OR) applied to service settings” (Chase, 1996). A major
breakthrough came in 1976 with the publication of Earl Sasser’s article “Match supply and
demand in service industries” in the Harvard Business Review, followed two years later by the
pioneering textbook Management of Service Operations (Sasser et al.,1978) containing what are now
regarded as classic cases and issues. Dick Chase also wrote a service article for the HBR “Where
does the customer fit in a service operation?” (1978). He challenged the operations management
community to consider two types of operations; the traditional back office factory and the
customer-facing, customer-contact front office. Chase and Sasser et al. provided academic
credibility and authority to the study of customer-based operations. Other papers with distinct
operations themes included “Production-line approach to service” (Levitt, 1972), “Quality control
in a service business” (Hostage, 1975), “The new back office focuses on customer service”) and
“Marketing’s potential for improving productivity in service industries”. Levitt’s paper is still
proving a rich source of inspiration for recent papers.

In essence, stage one (referred to by Brown et al. (1994) using the analogy of the development of
the human species) was the “crawling out” stage and was characterized by recognition of the
existence of service. The nature of academic work was primarily descriptive and focused on the
difference between goods and services. Chase described this as the “classification era”. Although
Levitt et al. and colleagues had started the service operations revolution, service operations was
still very wedded to its factory roots. Furthermore, whilst there was awareness of some of the
efforts in other functions, the concept of a cross-functional subject of service management was
some way off. Research was undertaken in subject areas with little or no cross-fertilization.
Table 1.1 summarizes the characteristics of this stage in the development of service operations
management.

Stage two — Breaking Free from Product-based Roots

The period between 1980 and 1985 was a time of “high interest and enthusiasm” in services. It
was accepted that services were different from goods (though that debate rumbled. During this
“scurrying about” period, many substantive issues were debated. The work was principally
conceptual in nature and was characterised by the development of frameworks to help understand
the characteristics of service and service management. Service operations academics continued
their work on “customer operations”. This focus on the customer and the service encounter was
growing apace in the other functions. Publications on this topic included “The critical incident as
a technique for analysing the service encounter”, “Boundary spanning role employees and the
service encounter: some guidelines for management research” and “Perceived control and the
service encounter”.

Operations academics were also breaking ground with new perspectives on traditional themes.
Wyckoff (1984), for example, wrote what might be considered an early TQM paper “New tools
for achieving service quality”. In this period the first two service operations management texts
were written.

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