A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg 1991 / The purpose of this thesis were to investigate the effective strategic options aVailable to professional service orgtanizations in the face of the challenging and changing south African environment. Since these organizations are viewed as integrated archetypes of organizational form, strategy and the personal Characteristics, perceptions and values of their top management, they were researched from this perspective. The professions are also viewed as progressing along a continuum of industrialzation, as theoretically defined, and the progress of the organizations along this route was examined to establish their position as a predictor of possible future trends.A model of the effectiveness of professtional service organizations in the face of the environmental challenges is also tested. The research was conducted with the assistance of the partners and clients of 56 prominent organizations from six professions in south Africa, covering three different industrial sectors, the commercial sector, the building and construction sector and the health care sector. Theory indicated certaint possible adaptive options aVailable to organizations in general, but due to the lack of speCific theoretically researched models for professional organizations, an inductive approach was taken to the research problem. In this way, the research findings would dictate the eventual correspondence to the theory. Multiple operationalism was used as a research approach in different stages of the research process, as was triangulation of research methods to arrive at the research results. The findings indicate that there are five groups of professional organizations representing different configurations of adaptation to the South African environmental circumstances. Using the model developed in the research to measure organizational effectiveness, it was found that three of these groups appear to be effective, while the other two are less effective. Some of the attributes of these five groups were contingent on the type of industry and the type of profession. The profiles of the partners provided a particularly fertile area of theory development and a number of propositions were generated which can be tested in future research. It was concluded that an integrated typology Of five groups of strategy, organization and the profile of the top management team did exist and that three of the options proved to be more effective that the other two. Further guidelines for the management of professional organizations, included the examination of the consequences of co-operative strategies, particularly in the light of a possible increase in consolidation within the industries, are given.

by Li Sau-fan, Elsie. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-76). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vi / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.vii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.viii / Chapter / Chapter I. --- BACKGROUND AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM --- p.1 / Chapter II. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.7 / Definition of Quality --- p.7 / "Selected Approaches to ""Quality""" --- p.8 / W. Edwards Deming --- p.8 / Philip B. Crosby --- p.12 / Deming vs. Crosby: Conflict or Synthesis --- p.15 / Chapter III. --- MODERN APPLICATION OF THE DELIVERY OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN SERVICE --- p.17 / Applying Statistical Control Philosophies to Service Quality Assessment --- p.18 / Background --- p.18 / A Gap Orientation to Service Quality --- p.23 / An Example --- p.26 / Managerial Implications and Recommendations --- p.29 / Selecting an Appropriate Approach to TQM Implementation --- p.30 / The Organization Alignment Model --- p.32 / Implementation --- p.41 / Chapter IV. --- CASE STUDY --- p.43 / One : Rank Xerox Hong Kong --- p.43 / The Quality Planning Process --- p.44 / Leadership Through Quality Programme --- p.44 / Management Commitment --- p.45 / A Strategic Focus on Internal and External Customers --- p.45 / Problems Encountered and Remedies --- p.46 / Conclusion --- p.47 / Two : American Express --- p.48 / The Magnitude of Quality Service in Amex --- p.48 / Late 1970's: Quality Assurance Programme --- p.49 / Current Approach: Teamwork Approach to American Express Quality Leadership (AEQL) --- p.50 / Chapter V. --- IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE IMPLEMENTATION OF TQM --- p.54 / Five Tenets of TQM --- p.54 / A Strategic Approach to Quality --- p.56 / Conclusion --- p.58 / APPENDIX --- p.59 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.74

This dissertation contributes to the study of a queueing system with a single pool of multiple homogeneous servers to which multiple classes of customers arrive in independent streams. The objective is to devise appropriate staffing and scheduling policies to achieve specified class-dependent service levels expressed in terms of tail probability of delays. Here staffing and scheduling are concerned with specifying a time-varying number of servers and assigning newly idle servers to a waiting customer from one of K classes, respectively. For this purpose, we propose new staffing-and-scheduling solutions under the critically-loaded and overloaded regimes. In both cases, the proposed solutions are both time dependent (coping with the time variability in the arrival pattern) and state dependent (capturing the stochastic variability in service and arrival times). We prove heavy-traffic limit theorems to substantiate the effectiveness of our proposed staffing and scheduling policies. We also conduct computer simulation experiments to provide engineering confirmation and practical insight.

In this study, an integrated model was proposed to examine the impact of emotional labor on quality of work life and psychological health among Chinese employees. Compared to other emotional labor models, this model considered the influence of perceived service culture as an antecedent of perceived organizational emotion control (i.e., display rules and performance monitoring). Apart from surface acting and deep acting, it also incorporated an alternative emotional regulation strategy, namely authentic self, to cope with the organizational emotion control. The integrated model included emotional expressivity as an individual factor that might influence the emotional regulation process. Two studies were conducted to examine the validity of the model. In Study 1, 486 Chinese service employees, including call center representatives, retail shop managers, human service workers, and local registered nurses were recruited. Path analysis was used to examine if the integrated model fit the cross-sectional data and results showed satisfactory model fit. A series of hierarchal regression analyses were conducted to examine the moderating effect of emotional expressivity. Instead of the hypothesized moderating effect, there were significant main effects of emotional expressivity on emotional regulation strategies. Considering the significant association between these variables, the integrated model was further revised by incorporating the emotional expressivity as an individual factor of emotional regulation strategies. Multi-sample path model analyses showed that the model was equally applicable in both gender groups for job and health outcomes. Result of the cross-sectional model showed that perceived service culture was directly related to both perceived display rules and performance monitoring. While perceived performance monitoring and authentic self were associated with surface acting, perceived display rule was in turn related to deep acting. Emotional expressivity was related to authentic self. Quality of work life was associated with surface acting and deep acting. This model could also be applied to understand psychological distress. / Study 2 was conducted to provide additional support to the integrated model, including an emotional expressivity training program and a longitudinal validation on the emotional regulation strategies model. In the emotional expressivity training program, 155 participants who had completed the questionnaire survey in Study 1 were recruited. Among them, 131 participants had joined a half-day emotional expressivity training program while 24 participants were assigned into the control group. The objective of the program was to enhance participants' positive expressivity and reduce negative expressivity and impulse strength. Results showed that the training was effective in maintaining participants' authentic self. In particular, authentic self did not change across time among training group. However, authentic self in the control group decreased significantly 3 months after the training program (T2) when it was compared to the pre-training period. In the longitudinal validation study, a longitudinal model was devised to measure changes on emotional expressivity at T1 and T2 and its relations to emotional regulation strategies among the training group (n = 131). The significant associations between perception of service culture, organizational emotion control, and emotional regulation strategies in Study 1 were also found in Study 2. Quality of work life at T2 was related to surface acting at T2 and quality of work life at TI. The longitudinal model was also applied to predict psychological distress. Deep acting, surface acting, and emotional expressivity at T2 as well as psychological distress at TI were significantly related to psychological distress at T2. Limitations, suggestions for future research, and practical implication to organizations are discussed in Chapter 6. / Cheung Yue Lok. / "July 2006." / Adviser: Catherine S. K. Tang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: B, page: 1970. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-189). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

by Leona Tam Wing Yin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-122). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.vi / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vii / Chapter Chapter I: --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.0 --- Overview --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Objective --- p.2 / Chapter 1.2 --- The Service Switching Behavior Model --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- The Design --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- Significance of This Study --- p.5 / Chapter 1.5 --- Outline of This Study --- p.5 / Chapter Chapter II: --- REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND MODEL DEVELOPMENT --- p.7 / Chapter 2.0 --- Overview --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Review of Relevant Studies in Services --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Unique Characteristics of Services --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Classification of Services --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Measurement of Service Quality --- p.14 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Review of Past Studies in Service Switching Behavior --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1.5 --- Characteristics of Service Switchers --- p.18 / Chapter 2.2 --- Limitations of Past Studies --- p.18 / Chapter 2.3 --- The Conceptual Model --- p.20 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- The Conceptual Framework --- p.20 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Definition of Constructs --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Causal Relationships among Constructs in the Conceptual Model and Hypotheses --- p.25 / Chapter 2.4 --- Summary --- p.32 / Chapter Chapter III: --- METHODOLOGY --- p.33 / Chapter 3.0 --- Overview --- p.33 / Chapter 3.1 --- Research Methodology --- p.33 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Research Strategies and Three-Horned Dilemma --- p.33 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- The Research Strategy Chosen for This Study --- p.34 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- The Design --- p.35 / Chapter 3.1.4 --- The Sample --- p.36 / Chapter 3.1.5 --- The Data Collection Procedure --- p.37 / Chapter 3.2 --- Operationalization of Constructs --- p.38 / Chapter 3.3 --- Statistical Analysis --- p.43 / Chapter 3.4 --- Research Activities --- p.45 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Pretest for Selection of Services for the Study --- p.45 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Pretest of the Questionnaire --- p.48 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- The Main Study --- p.48 / Chapter 3.5 --- Summary --- p.48 / Chapter Chapter IV: --- ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS --- p.50 / Chapter 4.0 --- Overview --- p.50 / Chapter 4.1 --- Scale Assessment --- p.50 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Unidimensionality of the Constructs --- p.51 / Chapter 4.1.1.1 --- Exploratory Factor Analyses --- p.51 / Chapter 4.1.1.2 --- Confirmatory Factor Analyses --- p.52 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Reliability --- p.53 / Chapter 4.2 --- Structural Equation Modeling --- p.54 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- The Structural Equation Models for All Three Services Combined --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.1.1 --- The Full Model for All Three Services Combined --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.1.2 --- The Modified Model for All Three Services Combined --- p.59 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- The Structural Equation Model for Fastfood Restaurants --- p.61 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- The Structural Equation Model for Hair Salons --- p.61 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- The Structural Equation Model for Banks --- p.62 / Chapter 4.3 --- Discussion --- p.63 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Results of the Service Switching Model for All Three Services Combined --- p.63 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Comparison of Structural Model Results of Overall Model and Individual Models --- p.64 / Chapter 4.4 --- Summary --- p.67 / Chapter Chapter V: --- CONCLUSION --- p.68 / Chapter 5.0 --- Overview --- p.68 / Chapter 5.1 --- Summary of the Research --- p.68 / Chapter 5.2 --- Contributions of the Research --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Theoretical Contributions --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Managerial Implications --- p.76 / Chapter 5.3 --- Limitations --- p.82 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Research Design --- p.82 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Sample and Sampling Procedure --- p.83 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Data Collection Procedure --- p.84 / Chapter 5.3.4 --- Measurement --- p.85 / Chapter 5.4 --- Future Research Direction --- p.85 / Chapter 5.4.1. --- The Use of More Comprehensive Model as the Conceptual Framework --- p.85 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Testing the Effect of Situational Factors on Service Switching --- p.86 / Chapter 5.4.3 --- Testing the Effect of the Customer's Personal Characteristics --- p.86 / Chapter 5.4.4 --- Using Different Service Classification Schemes to Choose Representative Service Industries to Be Tested in the Conceptual Model --- p.87 / Chapter 5.5 --- Summary --- p.87 / FIGURES: / Figure 1 --- p.89 / Figure 2 --- p.90 / TABLES: / Table 1 --- p.91 / Table 2 --- p.92 / Table 3 --- p.94 / Table 4 --- p.95 / Table 5 --- p.97 / Table 6 --- p.98 / Table 7 --- p.100 / Table 8 --- p.102 / Table 9 --- p.104 / Table 10 --- p.106 / Table 11 --- p.108 / Table 12 --- p.109 / APPENDIX --- p.110 / REFERENCE --- p.115

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / Every society must accommodate death. For this reason, the mortuary provides a vital service in the twenty-first century city, as it caters for the effects of unexpected death on individuals and society. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the city’s main mortuary currently functions in outdated and insufficient facilities, even though this urban centre has one of the highest death rates on the continent. An exploration of the Johannesburg Mortuary’s physical context and urban history reveals that this area remains fundamental to Johannesburg City’s health infrastructure and understanding of unnatural death. In addition, a theory study explores the influential ideas surrounding the mortuary typology at large. Here, three aspects are considered: the institutional role, the emotional role, and the spiritual role of the mortuary. Although the important medical and legal needs of state are acknowledged, this paper argues that the mortuary must also cater for the emotions of mourners and mortuary employees. In addition, the mortuary must seek to address death’s spiritual significance through an architectural expression of “liminality,” a concept that represents the transitional moment of death. Equipped with an understanding of the Johannesburg Mortuary’s physical, historic and theoretical contexts, this paper pursues an architectural response. The project’s final design represents the findings of this paper’s theory investigation, as applied to the chosen study site in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. Instead of perceiving the mortuary as an institutional barrier, the mortuary is designed as a bridge; the living are linked to the dead while they are held in a state of transition. / GR2017

Based on a fourteen-month period of ethnographic research conducted in an Australian Coastal hotel, this thesis explores the issues of management in a flexible organization. Using a textual approach to the study of organizations, the thesis focusses on the customer service discourse, its constituents, and the processes of its symbolic (re-) production in the hotel studied. Using a variety of textual data-among them academic publications from authors as diverse as Foucault, Clegg, Haugaard, Ritzer and Castoriadis; various forms of fieldnotes; and detailed descriptions of ritual and ceremonial events - the thesis not only provides a vivid account of organizational life at the hotel, it also identifies aspects of the latter such as meetings, training and reward programmes, and customer response schemes, as disciplinary technologies applied to govern both employees and customers. Extending the considerations about the disciplinary qualities of the customer service discourse and linking them with the issues of new forms of control as recently debated in the larger field of organization studies, the thesis will identify the processes of imagination, normalization, and subjugation as central to the establishment of a new management doctrine: corporate culturism. This discussion will also reveal the essentially hybrid nature of control under this new doctrine and it will expose the process of managing meaning as fundamental to its constitution and endurance. Respectively, the thesis will identify the hotel studied as an organization that thrives on corporate culturism. As the thesis represents a contribution to the field of (organizational) ethnography, it will - by recurrently reflecting on some of the contemporary debates in the field- implicitly address status and practicability of empirical (ethnographic) research in a postmodern world. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The service sector has been identified as the main force of economic and potentially sustainable growth in most developed economies. Nevertheless, despite the role of services in today's economy, little is known about what drives service innovation and which tools and methods determine successful service design and development. This dissertation focuses on addressing the challenges associated with the design, development and operation of service offerings. In the first essay (Chapter II) we explore the design challenges of an organization that develops an experiential service. In experiential services, the customer value extends beyond the functional benefits of the service, and it encompasses the overall experience. We draw upon the perspective of the customer journey, which is widely used by design firms (e.g., IDEO), and we model the entire service experience as a process comprising individual service steps (also known as touchpoints). The value of the service is "co-produced" over several touchpoints between the customer and the service provider. We identify the non-monotonic effects of the co-production losses and service complexity on the provider's design decisions, (i.e., price), and the touchpoints she controls. Finally, we fully characterize the conditions under which the service provider may use these design decisions to effectively signal the experience potential of the service offering. In the second essay (Chapter III) we study the auto manufacturer's choice regarding whether to provide mobility service (e.g., car sharing) in conjunction with the traditional sales channel. A utility maximization model is used to characterize the consumer's choice between purchasing a vehicle, benefiting from the mobility service or relying on an outside option (e.g., public transportation). We characterize the benefit to the manufacturer of providing mobility service and the environmental implications of this strategy. In the third essay (Chapter IV) we study the implications of "reference point" effects on the optimal service design. We envision the service delivery as a two-stage process in which customer satisfaction is stochastic. The service provider needs to determine the optimal level of effort to exert at each stage, given that the customer experience at the first stage of the process can affect the expectations regarding the experience at the second stage of the process.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 61 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-50).

The presence as well as the nature of the relationship between customer perceptions of service customization and reliability is investigated in the first of three studies of the dissertation by applying an exploratory analytical approach---"probabilistic scaling analysis." Results suggest the existence of a positive and ordinal relationship between customer perceptions of customization and reliable quality. The second study of the dissertation applies a more confirmatory, 'contingency theory' approach to validate, and further develop the findings of the first study. Results are consistent in that a positive and ordinal relationship is observed between customer perceptions of service customization and reliability. Further, findings suggest that customization quality moderates the affect of reliable quality on overall service evaluations. Some support is also found for the moderating role of reliable quality. Together, these findings help unravel the relationship between customer perceptions of service customization and reliability, and demonstrate how each of them affects the marketplace efficacy of the other. / Overall, results of the probabilistic scaling analysis, as well as contingency theory demonstrate that among customers at the lower end of the latent scale, it is primarily the 'things gone wrong,' i.e. lack of reliability that governs the unfavorability of their overall perceptions. Among customers on the higher end, it is 'things gone right,' i.e. favorable customization quality perceptions that govern the favorability of their overall perceptions. Together, these results suggest that a service provider must minimize 'things gone wrong' and then focus on 'things gone right' to elicit favorable overall evaluations. / In a service environment however, 'doing things right' requires an immediate understanding of individual needs that a customer brings forth during every service transaction, and that must be met to create value for the customer. Qualitative data are analyzed using a conceptual framework to provide a systematic understanding of these issues. Such understanding also provides diagnostic information towards exploring key segment level differences observed in the second study of the dissertation. Overall, the analyses of the third study extend current subject understanding by providing a contextual development of value-creating individual customer needs as they relate to service customization and reliability, and their implications on service design. / Overall, the dissertation develops current subject understanding of service customization and reliability, and therefore of service quality in general. Customers evaluate service offerings on both elements of quality---customization and reliability, and thus one of them cannot be studied without understanding its affects on the other component of quality. The research, we believe, would develop the understanding of the subject, and would also aid service providers in more scientific service design as well as decision-making.