A systemic design for mass customized service delivery in higher education institutions

A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS 逢 甲 大 學 商 學 博 士 學 位 學 程 博士論文 高等教育機構大量客製服務傳送的系統化 設計 A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS 指 導 教 授 ：頼文祥 博士 研 究 生 ： Pham Thuy Duong 中 華 民 國 一 百 零 八 年 九 月 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The objective of this chapter is to present an overview of the present research In order to accomplish this objective, this chapter is organized as follows: Section 1.1 presents the background of the research; Section 1.2 hightlights the significance of the study and definitions of key terms; Section 1.3 presents the major contributions of the present research to the fields of service mass customizaion and systems thinking applications; Section 1.4 describes research questions and research gap; Section 1.5 describes the objectives of the study and motivation; Section 1.6 proposes the theoretical framework; Section 1.7 provides a brief description of the research approach to the dissertation; Finally, Section 1.8 presents the delimitations of the study 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS 1.1 Research background The World Declaration on Higher Education highlights the need to develop student services worldwide It is imperative that higher education institutions (HEIs) provide services and programs that promote the quality of student life, to meet its needs and to improve learning and success achievements (Ludeman, 2002) The declaration is considered as the vision for student service operationalization The major functions of student services and administrations in any universities include admission, academic registry, fees and finance affairs, international affairs, central examinations, graduations, timetabling, customer services for students, and student information system Most of HEIs have identified the mission to provide the highest quality service to students due to student centricity approach To implement this mission in reality however is a challenge for universities where there is an increasing heterogeneity in student demands while the paradox of efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery is always a dilema In addition in the context of muticultural academic diversity, stimulated by globalization, there is a continual growth and diversification (Audin et al., 2003) in students’ demand especially in the context of strong competitions among universities Several universities are looking for innovative ways to gain competitive advantage over their rivals, as well as to create value for 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS students in terms of student experience and through administrative efficiency (Dunnion and O’Donovan, 2014) Derived from viewing students as customers with continual diversification, there is a need for service staff at universities to provide mass-customised services (MCS) and this cannot be achieved unless there is a departure from a mass-production approach (Pine, 1993) The mass-production approach is based on standardising work procedures in which university staff members need to handle students’ demands in a repetitive manner, with detailed descriptions of service procedures, dialogue scripts, and after-contact work standards (Jaaron and Backhouse, 2013) This standardisation of procedures, however, is perceived to increase the mechanisation of the student-employee contact and harm students’ satisfaction with HEIs (Dunnion and O’Donovan, 2014) Therefore, the transfer from product-oriented economies to service-oriented ones, as witnessed in the most developed countries, has fuelled attempts in the HEIs to migrate from mass production models to Mass Customisation (MC) ones (Tien, 2011) When moving to an MC approach, one of the major challenges to confront HEIs is their ability to develop an MC service strategy, which is dependent on the choice of a proper service operations design (Da Silveira et al., 2001; Moon et al., 2011) In addition, when considering 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS how to design services from which customers can ‘pull value’– i.e get what they want – Seddon (2008) believes that it is critical to shift from thinking of the system as one that pulls physical things together to manufacture at the rate of customer demand to thinking of the system as one that offers services together in response to the variety of customer demands, called ‘systems-thinking’ Developed since 2003 by Seddon, the terminology of ‘systems-thinking’ used throughout this paper to describe the service delivery system has emerged from the translation to the service sector of lean manufacturing principles (Seddon and Brand, 2008), incorporating Deming’s intervention theory (1982) together with Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (1981) According to Jaaron and Backhouse (2013), the employment of the systems-thinking approach for service operations design has a significant impact on the service-offering organisations in terms of providing a real-time mass-customised service Although MC of student services is essential and beneficial to universities as a sharp weapon in the competition, as analysed above, little attention has been paid by previous empirical studies to models and tools that can operationalise MC in universities Therefore, there is a need to conduct this research: “A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS” to investigate the impact of applying the systems-thinking approach on universities’ abilities to provide mass-customised services for their students 1.2 Significance of the study Firstly, the study introduced universities to an innovative model choice of systems thinking to implement service operations and delivery effectively & efficiently, which could seamlessly response to the continuous changes and diversification in student/ customer needs Secondly, due to proper model choice of service delivery design it could create value for students in terms of student experience and administrative efficiency and consequently contribute to enhance universities’ competitive advantage over their rivals Further, the most striking significance is to make success for both the students and the institution + For Institutions: if an institution follows the systems-thinking principles to deliver mass-customized services for students’ continuously-changed demands, it tends to become a learning organization, which could gain unique competitive edge As a result, the enrollment rate of both domestic and international students would increase, the service staff capability would be enhanced, and the International Outlook criteria in university ranking would be satisfied 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS + For Top Management Team and operations manager: it helps Top Management Team and operations managers realize the benefits of transfering from the top-down hierarchy perspective of Command and control thinking to outside-in system one of systems-thinking, which makes a great innovation in operations management of service departments/ institutions + For students: if students’ service demand could be met at the first contact, the value creation would be optimized and get student satisfaction As a result, it would contribute to the quality of students learning experience and their academic success Overall, there are several managerial implications for universities adopting the model of systems-thinking to implement their strategies of MC in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage It helps university administrators accordingly to know what to and where to start in their endeavor to design an MC service-delivery system based on systems-thinking Definition of the key terms Student services are services related to student affairs which are delivered to meet demands of diverse student population as individuals and as subgroups (Ludeman, 2002) such as admission, academic registry, 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS finance affairs, international affairs, customer services, testing, graduation, etc Mass customization (MC) is the process of providing a one-of-a-kind product without sacrificing the benefits of scale economies (Davis, 1987) Mass customized services (MCS) is the use of flexible processes and organizational structures to produce varied and often individually customized products and services at the low-cost of a standardized, mass-production product (Hart, 1994; Pine, 1993) Systems-thinking principles (STP) is defined as redesigning service operations around and from customer demand instead of functional hierarchies (Seddon, 2003& 2008) Higher education institutions (HEIs) designates organizations providing higher, postsecondary, tertiary, and/or third-level education 1.3 Contributions to the field To best of my knowledge, this research firstly contributes to the fulfillment of the gap of MC in service operations (Da Silveira et al, 2001) The value of this research secondly is the development of Systems theory applications in service operations through the design for mass customized service operationalization model for higher education 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS organizations Another major contribution of this study is to be able to respond to the need of academic discussion of systems thinking approach due to its significant impact on practice (Jackson, 2009) Further, one of the most significant contribution of this research is to create a measurement scale of the relationship between Systems-thinking design and mass – customised service capabilty of a higher education institution for student service operations, shortly termed as ST-MCS Last but not least, this research provided academic researchers with empirical evidences from Europe and Asia to support the operational model of MCS using systems- thinking approach 1.4 Research questions and research gaps O’Donovan (2010) argued that the prevailing ‘command and control’ (Seddon 2003) management logic, which can be found at work throughout both the public and private sectors, is the primary cause of inferior and expensive service Based on their findings, they suggested an alternative way using Principles of Systems-thinking (Jackson et al 2008), whilst comparing and contrasting this with the flawed thinking which currently prevails In addition, Jaaron and Backhouse (2013) showed that the systems-thinking principles for service operations design have a great influence on the ability of service-offering organizations to deliver a 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS real-time MCS Although the importance of MCS is significant as analyzed above, few studies were previously conducted and there still need more empirical studies to prove the possibility of operationalizing MCS at HEIs following systems-thinking design Therefore, the first research questions was formed as follows: How does the systems-thinking principles impact on universities’ abilities to provide MCS for their students in the UK? Although a few studies in the UK indicated that the systems-thinking approach has significantly enhanced the universities’ ability to design MCS, which are more able to absorb diversified student demand, this exposes a gap that we need to use different HEIs in different cultures and sittings to ensure that these constructs not confound results Hence, it is really meaningful if we could find a case from Asia to validate correlates of systems-thinking principles and MCS for students As a consequence, the following basic research question has been still unanswered How are the correlates of systems thinking principles and mass customized service delivery for students at Asian universities? 10 逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019) ... 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