Does Management's Approach Impede Service Quality?

The primary aim of this article is to examine the impact of management's approach on the effectiveness of service quality operations. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with multiple managerial actors at different hierarchical levels and archival sources, the findings suggest two alternative paths of management's approach regarding service quality. One of the paths distils customer confidence, aims to fulfil customer requirements as well as the strategic and potential intentions within the organisation. The other represents more of a short-term approach for managing service quality, which only demonstrates some aspects of customer satisfaction at the time when the customer interacts with the service provider. In the latter, as our evidence showed, the service provider could fail to build customer loyalty and face customer boycott. The findings highlight a fundamental need for management across different hierarchical levels to adjust their approach to encompass the entirety of service quality operations, if service quality practices are to result in employee satisfaction and desirable customer experience. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.