Bowen & Ford: Managing Service Organizations: Does Having a Thing Make a Difference?
12 important questions on Bowen & Ford: Managing Service Organizations: Does Having a Thing Make a Difference?
What did B&F do for their paper?
What for differences between service and product management were identified in the literature? (Bowen&Ford)
-measurements used to asses effectiveness and efficiency
-production strategies
-production processes
between organizations producing tangible goods and intangible services. There are a number of important and defendable difference between managing a manufacturing firm or a service.
It is clear that there are differences in management practices of organizations that produce tangible goods and intangible services. But there haven't spent much time on investigating the effect of these differences. what is the purpose of the research of Bowen&Ford?
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How do Bowen&Ford define services?
Why are distinctions between service and product organizations more difficult to make? (Bowen&Ford)
Name an additional complicating factor in developing disctinctions between organizations producing tangible or intangible goods (Bowen&Ford)?
Which characteristics make managing services different from managing goods? (Bowen & Ford)
Each customer subjectively evaluates the outcome of the service system. Thus, even when the outcome is consistent, as evaluated by objective measures, it will receive different evaluations from different customers. Bowen&Ford propose that intangibility and the outcomes of intangibility create major differences between the way an organization producing services is managed and the way one producing tangible products is managed. Which 3 differences are identified in the literature?
2 Differences in service production strategy (managing service product quality and managing capacity and demand)
3 Differences in service production outcome (managing product process, production setting, production employees to accommodate customers as co-producers, and hereby also managing customers as co-producers).
What is effectiveness and efficiency according to Bowen&Ford?
Efficiency is the ratio of inputs to outputs.
For both the aspects it is difficult to measure them for intangible services (what is the quality, what makes an psychiatric treatment effective and efficient? And measuring service inputs (f.e. purchasing a ticket) and output (f.e. guests in a restaurant for functional dining and for relaxing/long evening) are also difficult to measure.
What is the conclusion of Bowen&Ford?
Assessing organizational effectiveness and efficiency for an intangible product relies on subjective assessment of the customer. So traditional objective measurements need to be supplemented with subjective measure for assessing service experiences. How can this be done (2)? (Bowen&Ford)
2 Managing organizational efficiency subjectively: the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose. Measurements of inputs is problematic because they depend on customer co-production and his KSA's. Customers place different demands: hereby the delivery system must be efficient but flexible to meet heterogeneous demands.
What are the differences in managing service product quality? (Bowen&Ford)
2 Managing capacity and demand: capacity management can happen via maintenance scheduling during periods of low demand. Facilities and equipment can be rented. Demand management can happen via demand inventory, requiring customers to make reservations and shifting demand.
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