Understanding the impact of investment on business performance in different markets over time : lessons from eight academy schools

This thesis explores the impact of leadership, structure, process and systems investments on operational, financial and competitiveness performance in service organisations over time. In doing so, the research presented here aims to understand two questions. Firstly, how does investment impact business performance in different markets and, secondly, how does this relationship vary over time? These questions address a number of gaps within the service operations literature, as previous research has only looked at one type of investment and not understood how impact changes over time. Although some studies have looked at the relationship between investment and performance, none look at the impact on operational and financial performance. As a result, this research helps service organisations better understand how and where to make investments given their performance objectives and the nature of the market they serve. Schools were selected as examples of service organisations because they provide a similar service to each other and are measured using nationally regulated performance metrics, but operate in different ways (using different leaders, structures, processes and systems) in different markets (which vary in size and student type) with different access to resources (which vary in access to staff, students and money) and levels of competition (number, type and concentration of competitors). By studying the investments made in different schools over a five year period, this research was able to explore how different types of investment (leadership, structure, process and systems) affected impact business performance (operational, financial and competitiveness) in service organisations competing in different markets (size, customer type and competition).