Search results

The purpose of this paper is to measure service productivity using the Service Enterprise Productivity in Action (SEPIA) model. The research operationalises only one of the five stakeholder groups, the customer interface which incorporates service complexity (SC), customer interactions, customer channel, customer loyalty (CL) (new) as inputs, and CL (referred and repeat) and willingness to pay as output measures.

The research extends our understanding of existing service productivity models with the development of the SEPIA model. Data were collected from 14 organisations operating in the Australian travel and tourism industry, which was analysed using a data envelopment analysis input oriented variable return to scale method as applied to the SEPIA model customer interface.

Four key findings from the research include: customer choice and their ability to pay is a determinant of service productivity; service productivity is a two stage process when measured; SC is not categorical; and quality business systems do impact service productivity.

A limitation of this research is that only one (customer) of the five key stakeholders, customer, employee, manager, supplier and shareholder, was operationalised in this research paper.

The operationalisation of the SEPIA customer interface using transactional data and measuring non-financial, intangible factors of productivity provide managers with insights on what services to offer, when to invest in or promote the use of technology and whether to spend marketing effort on customer acquisition or customer retention.

The SEPIA model positions service firms within a social and service value network and provides a range of customer measures that extend the current capital (K), labour (L), energy (E), materials (M) and service (S), KLEMS measure of productivity and can be used to show the impact customers have on service productivity.

Drawing on a dynamic capability view, this study develops a decision support model that determines the most suitable configuration of strategies and challenges to adopt additive manufacturing (AM) to expedite digital transformation and performance improvement of the surgical and medical device (SMD) supply chain.

To investigate the research objective, a multi-method and multi-study research design was deployed using quality function deployment and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis.

The study finds that only resilience strategies or negation (i.e. minimisation) of challenges are not enough; instead, a configuration of resilience strategies and negation of challenges is highly significant in enhancing performance.

SMD supply chain decision-makers will find the decision support model presented in this study as beneficial to be resilient against various challenges in the digital transformation of service delivery process.

This study builds new knowledge of the adoption of AM technology in the SMD supply chain. The decision support model developed in this study is unique and highly effective for fostering digital transformation and enhancing SMD supply chain performance.

Sharing economy-based service platforms are a relatively new way of delivering services that have received increasing attention from both practitioners and researchers. However, current research in the area is still developing in terms of offering practical insight in conjunction with a decision model that may help to determine optimal strategies for efficient service design in the sharing economy from a service triad perspective. Exploring this gap in the literature, this paper aims to develop and apply a decision model that enables managers to identify and prioritise the efficiency attributes of sharing economy-based services. It also aids in designing optimal strategies to enhance efficiency over time based on the insights obtained from users (buyers and sellers) and platform providers.

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach. The qualitative approach comprised an extensive literature review followed by in-depth interviews, and the quantitative approach adopted the quality function deployment (QFD) integrated optimisation technique to design and prioritise the most optimal strategy emanating from the application of a decision model.

The findings revealed that establishing global distribution, continued technological research and development (R&D) and enhancing the transactional platform are the most important strategies in the context of sharing economy platform providers (e.g. accommodation-based-platform service providers). This study also revealed that as the importance weights of the efficiency attributes changed over time, so too did the portfolio of strategies used to attain an optimal efficiency level.

The decision model brings a richer conceptual understanding of the dynamic changes over time that occur in the business ecosystem. It also allows managers of sharing economy-based platforms to select optimal strategies and make astute decisions towards achieving efficient service design.

Despite the availability of several published reviews on the adoption of blockchain (BC) in supply chain (SC), at present, the literature lacks a comprehensive review incorporating the antecedents and consequences of BC adoption. Moreover, the complex adoption of BC in SC, explained with the mediating and moderating relationships, is not fully consolidated. Thus, the aim of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) on BC technology adoption (BCTA) in SC by integrating its antecedents and consequences.

Keyword searches were performed in multiple databases resulting 382 articles for evaluation and verification. After careful screening with respect to the purpose of the study and systematic processing of the retrieved articles, a total of 211 peer-reviewed articles were included in this study for review.

Various technological, organisational, individual, social, environmental, operational and economic factors were found as the antecedents of BCTA in SC. In addition, numerous applications of BC Technology (BCT) were identified, including asset management, identity management, transaction management, data management and operations management. Finally, the consequences of BCTA were categorised as operational, risk management, economic and sustainability outcomes.

This study can assist relevant decision-makers in managing the factors influencing BCTA and the potential uses of the technology to enhance SC performance.

By integrating the antecedents, applications and consequences of BCTA in SC, including the mediators and moderators, an integrated framework was developed that can potentially assist researchers to develop theoretical models. Further, the results of this SLR provide future directions for studying BCTA in supply chain management (SCM).

A significant management issue for nonprofit organisations (NPOs) is the disconnect between services beneficiaries and the funders of those services. Individual donors and fundraisers provide the resources to enable other people (or animals) to be supported. The purpose of this paper is to address this service management challenge through new types of customer service interactions that bring together service donors and service recipients through innovative digital communication.

Based on a review, and illustrated by recent examples of innovative best practice, the authors develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between customer participation and service brand communication.

The paper starts by identifying the problem of “nonprofit service disintermediation”. The paper also outlines the inadequacies of popular frameworks of communication, widely taught in business schools, to understand the new reality of customer-service organisation engagement in the digital age. Through adopting a customer engagement lens, the paper develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between customer participation and service brand communication.

Given the authors’ focus on the intersection between new communication opportunities and customer service interactions, this paper adds novel insight to theory and raises important implications for management.

The paper explores how, through these new communication interactions, engagement with, and loyalty to, the brand is built over time in a fluid and dynamic way. It identifies a disintermediated relationship, distinct to other service contexts, but significant in terms of value and social impact.

This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate or entrain their activities to those of others.

We interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces or other locations and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants' broader contexts.

Participants' documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some embedded in the templates they used, and others added by document creators and users. Participants' documentary time work involved creating and using a variety of tools and strategies to reconcile and manage multiple temporalities and indexical time concepts that held multiple meanings. Their work employed both standard “off the shelf” and individualized “do-it-yourself” approaches.

This article combines several concepts of invisible work (document work, time work, articulation work) to show both how individuals engage in documentary time work and how that work is situated within broader social and temporal contexts and standards.