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Bo Edvardsson
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Professor and
Editor IJSIM
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11A 304
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+46 54 700 15 57
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46 54-57 24 38
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| +46 54 83 65 52 |
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+46 706 33 44 78
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| Bo.Edvardsson@kau.se |
Service Research Center
Faculty of Economy, Communication and IT
Karlstad University
SE-651 88 Karlstad
SWEDEN
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Welcome to my homepage consisting of a short description of my research
and my CV including published
books, reports and scientific articles!
My research can be divided into five main areas:
· Service Management and Marketing
· Service Quality
· Customer Relationship Dynamics (focusing on Critical Incident & Directive
Incident studies)
· New Service Development.
· Service Culture and Service Strategy
There are also links to other fields such as marketing, theory of organization,
general management, strategy and culture research, entrepreneurship, quality
control and operations management.
Additional research merits:
- Member of the editorial staff of the following journals: International
Journal of Service Industry Management, Managing Service Quality, International
Journal of Internet Marketing & Advertising and Journal of Service Research.
- Member of organizational committees for several research conferences
on Service Management and for the international symposium on Quality
in Services, QUIS 1-8, held every other year since 1988 alternately
in Sweden and in the USA. Co-ordinator of the International Academy
of Services Research and Education.
- Member of the Board of Directors for, ETOUR, Östersund, Service Forum,
Söderhamn and the Institute for Quality Improvement.
- Opponent at 14 dissertations in Sweden, Finland, Norway and England.
- Take part in Executive seminars in Malaysia and Singapore and other
countries on a regular basis.
In this section I will give a brief account of my
research: what I have worked with, my view of the area I have researched
in recent years and how I consider my research has contributed to the
growth of knowledge.
My research can be divided into two main areas: Product
Development and Service Management. There are of course links with other
areas such as marketing, theory of organization, general management, strategy
research, entrepreneurship, quality control and "operations management".
However, I will not here refer to the links with these various fields
of knowledge.
The research that formed the basis of my thesis concerned
company strategies for product development. While doing basic studies
for a degree in agriculture, I became an assistant to Professor Harry
Nyström (HN). HN inspired me to commence research on product development
and innovations. The emphasis lay on companies' strategies, particularly
the interplay between intended strategy, realized strategy and results.
In these studies a frame of reference was developed and tested that makes
it possible to describe and analyze/categorize the companies' strategies
for product development. The conceptual framework and the results of empirical
studies of companies in the food and agricultural machinery sectors are
contributions to the growth of scientific knowledge. One of the two studies
that focused on companies that manufacture agricultural machinery comprised
an extensive study of 140 companies, by and large a total survey.
In several of the companies studied, the people interviewed
emphasized the important part that services of various kinds play for
competitiveness and profitability. Service, maintenance and stocking of
spare parts, consultant services, training services, warranties and financial
services may be mentioned as examples of services. Despite the central
role that services were considered to play, very little attention was
paid to them in product development. They appeared to be merely "an appendage
to the hardware", there was no systematic work whatever on the development
and design of new services, which among other things led to problems in
the quality of the services. My interest in the quality and development
of services can be attributed to the observations I made in conjunction
with research within the scope of my doctoral thesis.
My interest in the customer perspective
in product development work, which among others von Hippel at MIT emphasizes,
led to my carrying out a study of how customers evaluate new food products.
The study focused on factors, which - from the
customer's point of view - are central in the choice of new food products.
I will by way of introduction give a
brief account of which areas of research and which issues I have treated
in the seven years or so that I have devoted to research into Service
Management, and what I consider that I have contributed to the growth
of knowledge.
My research in the field of Service
Management may be described in the following areas:
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My distinctive area is the quality concept in
the production of services. I have carried out 20 or so studies in
this field, with different approaches to the problems of quality.
Customer experienced quality has been studied, both internally and
externally. Particular attention has been paid to critical incidents
in customer relations. I consider that I have contributed to an increase
in understanding of customer care and the handling of complaints. |
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Marketing of services, where I have among other
things studied the role of services as a means of competition in the
engineering industry, as well as writing a textbook |
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The relationship between buyers and consultants,
focusing on purchasing processes with regard to management consultant
services. |
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Productivity in the production of services. |
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Internationalization in service companies, where
a frame of reference has been developed for the analysis of internationalization
processes in service companies. Ten companies with international operations
have been studied in detail. |
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Based on the theory of social cognition, methods
to survey the strategic thinking of participants in (service) companies
have been developed. |
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In the past five years I have devoted a great
deal of my time to the development and design of services with the
purpose of building in the right quality. A number of case studies
have been carried out, which has contributed to a wider knowledge
of the difficulties and success factors in the development of services.
A theoretical frame of reference for description and analysis of the
design of services and the process of service development are important
contributions to the growth of knowledge. A number of articles and
papers have been published. |
We live in a service society. The private
and public service sectors account for 70 % of the Swedish gross domestic
product. If we add to this the production of services effected in manufacturing
companies the proportion rises to about 85 %
Despite the great importance services
have in our society, rather little attention has been paid to the management,
organization, marketing and development of service operations. Modern
management is based to a large extent on studies of and experience from
large manufacturing companies. These management principles are not always
appropriate in service companies where small-scale advantages often prevail.
In the past 10 - 15 years therefore, the field of Service Management has
begun to establish itself, both in academic research and in industry.
The need for further growth of knowledge is, however, great. We need to
increase understanding of services and service production by developing
concepts and models for description and analysis that capture what is
characteristic of service operations. This has been an important part
of my research, for instance the development and testing of a model for
quality analysis, the so-called Consistency Model, development of a model
for the handling of services as a means of competition, a frame of reference
for description and analysis of internationalization strategies and processes
in service companies, new methods for the description of strategic thinking
based on the theory of social cognition, and a set of concepts and a tentative
model for service design. In several empirical studies - for example by
using the Critical Incident Technique - I have surveyed and analyzed what
are important quality determinators from the customer's perspective.
One area in Service Management that has
been paid particular attention and in which I have taken an interest is
quality in services. Many executives regard quality as the most powerful
medium for improving competitiveness, customer satisfaction and profitability.
In many service companies 30 % of the staff are occupied with correcting
faults. It is not quality that costs, but inadequate quality. The term
inadequate quality cost should therefore be used and not quality cost.
A study among the heads of the 500 largest
companies in Europe shows that quality from the customer's perspective
is assessed as being much the most important strategic area of development
during the nineties. The American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) makes
a detailed survey every other year of how American executives regard quality,
work with quality etc. In the latest study form 1989, carried out by Gallup,
"QUALITY: Executives' Perceptions on Quality in a Competitive World",
shows that improved quality of service is what is most frequently mentioned
as a means to improve customer satisfaction.
That quality is profitable appears clearly
from a large international study, the so-called PIMS study, in which about
3,000 business units were analyzed. (PIMS stands for Profit Impact of
Market Strategies). The business units were divided into three groups
on the basis of the customer perceived quality. The group with high customer
perceived quality had 6 times higher profitability (measured as return
on investment) compared with the poorer third. A common view among service
researchers is that quality is fulfilling the customers' expectations,
both customers in the market and customers or receivers of services within
the service company. "Quality is meeting the customers' expectations and
satisfying their needs/demands. Customer experienced quality is defined
as the relationship between expected and perceived service".
My view of quality is: "Quality, as
I see it, is a matter of finding out what creates value for the customer
and achieving this. You have to be able to familiarize yourself with and
have a profound understanding of the customer and the issue in question.
What is fundamental is that the customer's demands are defined in the
right way. If this is not the case, high quality can never be attained.
Knowledge and understanding of what the customer needs must then be translated
into a requirement specification for the services. At the next stage the
requirements specification is converted into concrete services".
Speaking about high quality becomes unclear
and rather meaningless from the management point of view. The term right
quality should be used instead. By right quality is meant that the specification
or requirements set up for the service in question have been achieved.
Services are not a uniform concept. There
are great differences between, for example, qualified consultant services
and cleaning services. Despite these differences there are certain common,
characteristic features in services. My research shows that they can primarily
be attributed to the following:
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The customer often participates
directly and actively in the production process as a co-producer.
It is therefore important to prepare for a working dialogue with the
customer. Pedagogical production systems and customer training play
an important part in this context. The customer's role, participation
and responsibility in the production of a service must be made clear
in order to attain the right quality. |
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Services are often abstract and
therefore difficult to explain for the supplier and difficult to assess
for the customer. This means that special demands are made on marketing
so as not to create mistaken, often too high expectations from the
customer. It is the responsibility of the service supplier to ensure
that the customer does not have unrealistic demands and expectations.
The control of customer expectations is all too often forgotten in
quality work. |
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Many non-standardized services are
very closely linked to the service supplier as a person. The knowledge,
commitment and conduct of the staff are therefore important quality
factors from the customer's perspective. |
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In all service production it is
important to specify/clarify the services you are working with. These
must, moreover, be communicated within the organization and accepted
by the staff. This not only applies to services offered externally
to customers in the market, but also within the company, in relationships
with internal customers and for internal services. |
My research into service production and
the quality of service operations indicates a need for increased understanding
of how the services are basically designed. I have therefore partly returned
to the field of product development in my research. Let me here give a
brief account of how I view the area of service design, a field of research
that in my opinion will be a subject of great interest among researchers
in the service area in the years to come.
By the concept of service design I mean:
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The design of the service concept
or model for the service, i.e. the customer benefit and the advantages
(value to the user/beneficiary) that the service (and its various
elements) are intended to be the bearer of and convey to the customer.
The concept should match the customer needs they are intended to satisfy.
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The design of a production system
and production process for the service. The basic idea is that the
service, which arises during the process, with the support of the
system, conforms to the service concept. The right customer perceived
quality of service is built in from the start. |
Concept means pattern or model. The service
concept must always be related to a customer. The customer, internal and/or
external, decides the value and quality of the service. The service concept
must correspond to all the different customer needs it is intended to
satisfy.
In order to design a good service concept,
you must familiarize yourself with the customer's situation, needs and
expectations. You must have a profound understanding of the customer,
the customer's world, the customer's business logic, the customer's basis
of assessment, etc. Uncertainty as to who the customer is and what demands
and preferences the customer has lies behind many failures in respect
of new or modified services.
To ensure that customer requirements
in various respects are satisfied, competent and demanding customers should
assist in the design of new services. The various value- bearing elements
of the service are designed in dialogue with the customer. Work is done
interactively and the new service concept is built up together with the
customer. This customer active paradigm gains all the more impetus when
applied to product development for high-tech products, but seems even
more natural and urgent for services.
When designing a service concept, it
should be noted that individual services will often be included in systems
together with other services, existing and/or new. To attain the right
quality and high productivity these "system aspects" should also be considered.
Services often arise from interaction
between people. The customer participates and often contributes actively
during the process. The process in which the service arises takes place
within the framework of a system. One description, based on my research,
is that the components of the production system comprise the service company's
staff, their customers, the organizational structure and the physical
environment.
The staff are often regarded as the
key resource of the service company. Unfortunately however, recruiting,
training and phasing-out of personnel are not always handled systematically
and professionally. The choice of members of staff and their training/
education should reasonably be an integrated part of the development of
new services.
The production system should be designed
so that it is easy for the customer not only to assist but also to contribute
actively to the process. Pedagogical production systems, customer training
etc play an important part in this context. The customer should be included
when new services are designed and existing ones redesigned, in order
to ensure that the interplay with the customer works and that the customer
can contribute in the best way, both by giving information and by performing
various items in the production process. Even the interplay between customers
should be organized.
The physical environment in the form
of technical systems, premises, equipment etc affects the service and
gives clear signals as to quality. The fourth component is the organizational
structure, which has to do with the division of responsibility and authority,
planning and information systems, co-operation between different departments,
various administrative aids and availability, for instance how easy it
is for the customers to get in touch with the service supplier. Service
design must also include these organizational aspects.
Services are processes and, as mentioned
earlier, they often arise from direct interaction between people, service
suppliers and customers. To obtain a service that corresponds to the service
concept, the process, including microprocesses, that "generate" the right
service must be chiseled out in detail. Quality and productivity must
be built in from the start by designing the "right" production process.
By production process is meant the chain
(or chains) of activity that must exist in order to bring about the service.
There are certain parts of the chain that are more problematic or critical
than others. These should be given special attention so that the result
is the desired service of the right, uniform quality.
Various parts of the production system
are utilized during the process. The production system should support
the process and not be an obstacle or create problems. The concept of
quality in service production is the area I have given most attention
to in my research. Amongst other things in this field, a model for analysis
of service operations has been developed and tested in several empirical
studies.
You can also look in the research
database or look at CTF´s research
projects to find out more. | 
