Measurement of quality is an important area within the services sector. To date, most attempts at measurement have focussed on how external clients perceive the quality of services provided by organisations. Although recognising that relationships between providers within a service environment are important, little research has been conducted into the identification and measurement of internal service quality. This research focuses on the measurement of internal service quality dimensions in the complex service environment of an internal healthcare service chain. The concept of quality in healthcare continues to develop as various provider, patient and client, governmental, and insurance groups maintain an interest in how to 'improve' the quality of healthcare service management and delivery. This research is based in healthcare as a major area within the service sector. The service environment in a large hospital is complex, with multiple interactions occurring internally; health is a significant field of study from both technical and organisational perspectives providing specific prior research that may be used as a basis for, and extension into service quality; and the implications of not getting service delivery right in healthcare in terms of costs to patients, families, community, and the government are significant. There has been considerable debate into the nature, dimensionality, and measurement of service quality. The five dimensions of SERVQUAL (tangibles, assurance, reliability, responsiveness, and empathy) have become a standard for evaluations of service quality in external service encounters, although these have been challenged in the literature. As interest in internal service quality has grown, a number of researchers have suggested that external service quality dimensions apply to internal service quality value chains irrespective of industry. However, this transferability has not been proven empirically. This research examines the nature of service quality dimensions in an internal healthcare service network, how these dimensions differ from those used in external service quality evaluations, and how different groups within the internal service network evaluate service quality, using both qualitative and quantitative research. Two studies were undertaken. In the first of these, interviews with staff from four groups within an internal service chain were conducted. Using dimensions established through qualitative analysis of this data, Study Two then tested these dimensions through data collected in a survey of staff in a major hospital. This research confirms the hierarchical, multidirectional, and multidimensional nature of internal service quality. The direct transferability of external quality dimensions to internal service quality evaluations is only partially supported. Although dimension labels are similar to those used in external studies of service quality, the cross-dimensional nature of a number of these attributes and their interrelationships needs to be considered before adopting external dimensions to measure internal service quality. Unlike in previous studies, equity has also been identified as an important factor in internal service quality evaluations. Differences in service expectations between groups in the internal service chain, and differentiation of perceptions of dimensions used to evaluate others from those perceived used in evaluations by others were found. This has implications on formulation of future internal service quality instruments. For example, the expectations model of service quality is currently the dominant approach to conceptualising and developing service quality instruments. This study identifies a number of problems in developing instruments that consider differences in expectations between internal groups. Difficulty in evaluating the technical quality of services provided in internal service chains is also confirmed. The triadic nature of internal service quality evaluations in internal healthcare service chains and the problems associated with transferring the traditional dyadic measures of service quality are identified. The relationships amongst internal service workers and patients form these triads, with patient outcomes a significant factor in determining overall internal service quality, independent of technical quality. This thesis assists in supporting the development of measurement tools more suited to internal service chains, and will provide a stronger and clearer focus on overall determinants of internal service quality, with resultant managerial implications for managerial effectiveness.

The competition between product and service procedure is more and more alike. Because it is difficult to distinguish the differences between hospitals on both tangible product and service procedure, the most important is service of employee. The service of employee is a competitive advantage and is hard to copy. Azzohlini (1993) mentioned the function quality and response of internal employee were important resources that revealed the discrepancy between each enterprise and the competitive advantage of it. Heskett, et al. (1994) mentioned that the model was related to the concept of service-profit chain. They thought the internal service quality to employees would strengthen the satisfaction, royalty and productivity of employees, then creating high service value. High service value brought out high external customer satisfaction and royalty. That is why the internal service quality is so important to organizational profit and revenue growth. And most of the researchers agree that only satisfied employees can create satisfied customers. In Taiwan, the government has advanced the system of medical insurance, so the need of medical treatment is expanding. The service of hospital includes facility and employee. When the patient enter the hospital for their disease, many employees have to take care of them. The employees are doctors, pharmacists, nurses, administrative staff, and so on. The greater part of employees is nurses. They are the front line to contact with and care for patient. The service of nurse is very important and is hard to copy. Researchers have found many factors of external service quality and developed measuring methods for service quality from the perspective of customers ( Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1985; George & Gronroos, 1989¡F Heskett, 1990). In the meantime, the measurement of internal service quality was hardly mentioned. Yes, some researcher paid attention to this topic. They discussed the significance of internal service quality from other researches or their own observation. But we need more information about it. So this research tries to find the factors of internal service quality and explores the relationship between the internal service quality, the job satisfaction, the service ability and external service quality. After interviewing nurses, we integrated the data of the interviews and the exploration of other research papers to develop the questionnaire. The questionnaire had been filled out by the nurses who work in large-scale hospital. We induce the following results: (1) The factors of internal service quality are as follows: the style of management, the contact with other department, the training, the support of nursing department, the reward, the correct and definite responsibility, the resources, the content of job and the target of hospital. (2) The service ability include the professional knowledge, techniques and attitude. (3) The factors of external service quality about employee include the content of service and the efficiency of service. (4) Because of different personal characteristic, nurses have different recognition to factors of internal service quality except the training and the support of nursing department. (5) The different personal characteristic may brings out different recognition of service ability, job satisfaction. (6) The different personal characteristic may brings out different recognition of factors of external service quality about employee. (7) The correlation between factors of internal service quality, service ability and job satisfaction is positive except the training and the content of job. (8) The regression models that include internal service quality-service ability model, internal service quality-job satisfaction model, internal service quality-content of service model and internal service quality- efficiency of service model are significant. (9) For full model, the structure of model is fit except the direct relationship between internal service quality and external service quality about employee. We think the relationship is transmitted by job satisfaction and service ability.

The management and measurement of internal service quality is a special issue. If managers and specialists of human resource want to improve their internal service quality, they must understand the internal service factors their customers consider important. This study assesses the human resource services quality through viewpoints of the internal customers. The literatures review includes the topics of internal marketing, the roles and functions of human resource department, the concepts and measurement tools of service quality, and evaluation of organizational performance induced by human resource management. This study finds that managers expect the service quality factors are: innovation, completeness, problem solving, reliability, aggressiveness, structure and control, physical resources, and professional ability. From the results, we find the completeness and professional ability are the most important two factors to the managers investigated. They also indicate these two factors have the largest gap between the real and expected level. Most of the respondents think the reliability is good for their HR departments. Structure and control, and reliability of HR service have significant impacts on the organizational performance. The management performance has good mediating effects between the HR service quality and market performance of organizations. For the ¡§Direct Evaluation Model¡¨ and the ¡§Gap Model¡¨ of the internal service measurement, the first one has better forecasting power to both management and market performance.

Globalization creates for companies’ new opportunities for business development, as well as new challenges. One of the most prevailing challenges is the ability to create new products and services in accordance to diverse customer needs and requirements, as well as implementation of new technologies in future lines of products. Therefore, companies realize the importance of the Marketing and Sales (M&S) and Product Development (PD) departments. The interface between those two departments plays a decisive role in realization of customer needs and requirements, and application of the right technologies in new products. The speed and accuracy with which the information between the M&S and PD department is exchanged directly influences success of one’s products on the market. Consequently, companies strive to achieve greater level of cross-functional integration within the interface, by overcoming barriers to integration, and improving the quality of internal services by utilizing computer based Information Systems (IS). The role of IS in supporting cross-functional work environment is growing, thus companies of all size make investment in IS. Nonetheless, these investments very often fail or not bear expect results, due to lack of alignment of the investment with the business. This thesis documents a diagnosis undertaken for the Case Company. In recent years the Case Company experienced rapid international expansions and fast growth, which in turn exposed a whole new range of problems. The existing work routines turned out to be inadequate to maintain international expansion and growth. A great deal of these problems was enrooted directly in the interface between the M&S and PD departments. Therefore, the company realized a need to isolate and eliminate them, and further foster the cross-functional integration and information flows within the interface by implementation of a computer based Information System. The purpose of this thesis is to enhance the understanding of the integration and communication process within the M&S and PD departments at the Case Company. In order to fulfil the purpose the Enterprise Knowledge Development modelling technique was employed. This allowed tracing the problems to their roots, by mapping business processes, goals, rules, actors, as well as clarification of concepts. As a result an objective snapshot of the current cross-functional integration between the M&S and PD departments was created. Further, this snapshot was compared against a great body of literature in the field of Product Development and Management and Process Management. The comparison made it possible to indicate areas for potential future improvements. The proposed change needs aimed at enhancing the internal customer satisfaction. Last but not the least in deep analysis of the current cross-functional relations within the interface made it feasible to suggest (with literature assistance) initial vital functions of a computer based Information System to enhance the integration and information flows within the studied interface at the Case Company. The proposed functionality corresponds to the current, as well as anticipated needs of the interface that has been derived based on requirements of the actors to fulfil goals and satisfy organizational processes.

Service industry or service economy is now taking a big part of the whole economy. Service sector is still a fast growing market over the world, especially in the developing countries. The adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM), which focuses on customer satisfaction, was widely accepted by most service organization. However, very few organizations and researchers have paid attention to employees’ satisfaction. Especially in some developing countries, like China, government owned companies are the monopolists in the domestic market. Employee’s satisfaction is mostly not an element of business strategy. In recent years, some service organizations found that employees’ satisfaction has significant influences on customers’ satisfaction. Satisfying employees by providing internal quality services is now becoming apart of company’s strategy. Service organizations realized that they should treat their employees as internal customers and delivery quality services to them as to external customers. The purpose of this study is to introduce and illustrate the concept of internal service as well as internal customer, to help service organizations to implement an internal customer-oriented management philosophy and to establish an internal quality management system from a theoretical perspective. As Chinese market is more and more open, the competition in service sector, e.g. bank, insurance and hotel, will be extremely strong without a doubt. So, this study can also used by service organizations to gain competitive advantages by building and redesigning service production processes.

Research and develop (R&D) can expand scope and depth of the products for enterprises, and extend the life of products, in order to keep the growing up continuously forever of enterprises. Which factors does R&D performance come from? Through References find the research structure whose are ' Internal Service Quality ', ' Working Satisfaction ' and ' Knowledge Management '. And then design the questionnaire, investigate, analyze, and get the real example result. This research regards R&D department of M company of the vehicle curtain industry of Taiwan as the target of check, collect interviewee to above-mentioned four dimensions approval degree, use SPSS software to analyzing, the conclusion is as follows: 1) Knowledge Management is positive influence to R&D performance, but explain that strength is on the low side. It shows it is on although Knowledge Management it is real reason, it have not probing into otherly importantly really (such as patents, R&D ability). 2) Working Satisfaction is positive influence to R&D performance, but explain that strength is on the low side. Shows Working Satisfaction although real reason, have other probing into really important factor (such as marketing ability). 3) Internal Service Quality is positive influence to Working Satisfaction, it is very good to explain strength. Shows that Internal Service Quality is an important real reason, the company should improve Internal Service Quality of R&D department, could improve better Working Satisfaction. 4) Knowledge Management is positive influence to Working Satisfaction, it is good to explain strength. Shows that Knowledge Management is an important real reason, the company should improve Knowledge Management of the R&D department, could improve better Working Satisfaction. 5) Knowledge Management is positive influence to Internal Service Quality, it is good to explain strength. Shows that Knowledge Management is an important real reason, the company should improve Knowledge Management of the R&D department, could improve better Internal Service Quality. This precise inference Internal Service Quality and Knowledge Management of research, in order to influence the important factor of Working Satisfaction, and then offer a administrator to improve and propose. And R&D performance Important factor, not merely two which this research institute mentions constructs the surface (Working Satisfaction and Knowledge Management ), but case Company can is it improve Working Satisfaction and Knowledge Management because of it really to influence R&D performance to have priority, other factors can be improving via the research later on , can promote apparent R&D performance even more.

<p>Globalization creates for companies’ new opportunities for business development, as well as new challenges. One of the most prevailing challenges is the ability to create new products and services in accordance to diverse customer needs and requirements, as well as implementation of new technologies in future lines of products. Therefore, companies realize the importance of the Marketing and Sales (M&S) and Product Development (PD) departments. The interface between those two departments plays a decisive role in realization of customer needs and requirements, and application of the right technologies in new products. The speed and accuracy with which the information between the M&S and PD department is exchanged directly influences success of one’s products on the market. Consequently, companies strive to achieve greater level of cross-functional integration within the interface, by overcoming barriers to integration, and improving the quality of internal services by utilizing computer based Information Systems (IS). The role of IS in supporting cross-functional work environment is growing, thus companies of all size make investment in IS. Nonetheless, these investments very often fail or not bear expect results, due to lack of alignment of the investment with the business.</p><p>This thesis documents a diagnosis undertaken for the Case Company. In recent years the Case Company experienced rapid international expansions and fast growth, which in turn exposed a whole new range of problems. The existing work routines turned out to be inadequate to maintain international expansion and growth. A great deal of these problems was enrooted directly in the interface between the M&S and PD departments. Therefore, the company realized a need to isolate and eliminate them, and further foster the cross-functional integration and information flows within the interface by implementation of a computer based Information System.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to enhance the understanding of the integration and communication process within the M&S and PD departments at the Case Company. In order to fulfil the purpose the Enterprise Knowledge Development modelling technique was employed. This allowed tracing the problems to their roots, by mapping business processes, goals, rules, actors, as well as clarification of concepts. As a result an objective snapshot of the current cross-functional integration between the M&S and PD departments was created. Further, this snapshot was compared against a great body of literature in the field of Product Development and Management and Process Management. The comparison made it possible to indicate areas for potential future improvements. The proposed change needs aimed at enhancing the internal customer satisfaction. Last but not the least in deep analysis of the current cross-functional relations within the interface made it feasible to suggest (with literature assistance) initial vital functions of a computer based Information System to enhance the integration and information flows within the studied interface at the Case Company. The proposed functionality corresponds to the current, as well as anticipated needs of the interface that has been derived based on requirements of the actors to fulfil goals and satisfy organizational processes.</p>

This thesis describes implementation of HR change management processes of company ABB in ERP system SAP. Due to highly specific requirements for applications, standard component Personnel Change Request was not used. Authorized applicants have access to applications via SAP NetWeaver Portal. Approvers decide about approval or rejection of requests in Universal Worklist component of SAP NetWeaver Portal. Requests that require processing in HR Center are processed by employees of HR Center in SAP ERP. Applications that can be accessed via SAP NetWeaver portal were programmed with useage of framework Web Dynpro for ABAP. Processes are controlled by SAP Business Workflow.

This study explores how foreign owned service firms with headquarters in developed markets transfer their service culture into a country with an emerging market like Nigeria. This study is motivated by the need to understand this process considering the unique features of these markets, and the expansion into countries with emerging markets by service firms located in countries with developed markets to take advantage of both natural and human resources. The research uses case studies of two hotels from different firms, both in Abuja, Nigeria, to explore activities that enhance the transfer of service culture from the Headquarters of these hotels based in the USA. Both hotels were investigated through semi-structured interviews, based on elements of internal service quality from the service profit chain model, in addition to documents and observation notes. The finding reveals the process of transferring service culture is difficult and complex because of unique contextual challenges. Some of these challenges were shown to be country specific, while some may be unique to countries with emerging markets. The country specific challenges include; strong religious allegiance and cultural affinity, and unique societal factors. Other factors could apply to any country with an emerging market these include; corruption, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of skilled labour. Similarly this study identified new elements that enabled both firms to address these challenges as well as enhance the transfer of focal areas in their signature service culture. Some of these elements have also been identified to be country specific i.e. inclusiveness and provision of social support, while the remaining three are emerging market specific i.e. transfer of knowledge and skills, accommodating corruption, and improvisation. These new elements also add to the existing five elements of internal service quality, which are employee selection, job description, reward and recognition, tools to serve customers, and workplace design. The study demonstrates the important role that intermediaries can play in achieving accommodations to achieve at least partial transfer of the parent service culture. Overall, the research contributes to management practice by highlighting areas to focus on when attempting to transfer service culture in similar circumstances. This thesis adds to the academic literature on the transfer of service culture from headquarters in a developed country to a unit in a country with an emerging market. It does this by extending concepts from the service profit chain to show how internal elements can enhance or block the transfer of service culture.

Problem definition: In service organizations, front-line employees are considered to be the primary element when providing the organization’s services as they interact directly with customers and influence their perception of service quality. In other words, if the front-line employees are satisfied they will deliver the organization’s services in the best way which will directly lead to customer satisfaction. So it is worth studying how the service organizations use internal marketing tools towards their front-line employees in order to achieve their satisfaction.     Purpose of the Research: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the human resources practices aimed at front-line employee’s satisfaction that is related to internal marketing at SEB and to show how using the various methods implemented by SEB has took the organization to the position as of now.   Research Questions: How the Internal marketing elements are practiced by human resources at SEB bank in order to achieve front-line employee´s satisfaction?   Methods: In order to fulfil the purpose of dissertation the primary and secondary data has been analyzed based on the theoretical concepts. The theoretical concepts are based on academic data from books and scientific articles. The empirical data consists of both primary and secondary data. The primary data has been collected by conducting two interviews, one with the manager from human resource department at SEB and another with a front-line employee. The secondary data were collected from SEB’s webpage.    Conclusion: This study explores the potential effect the organization can have on the services due to the workings of the front-line employees. It can be concluded from the theoretical and empirical analysis that SEB’s management sees internal marketing practices (such as empowering, motivations and rewarding, job security and training) as a fundamental approaches to achieve their front-line employee’s satisfaction. SEB considers its employees as the most vital asset that can create and achieve its customer’s satisfaction, which has led to its immense growth.