If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.
IntroductionThe literature on quality management in services has been expanding rapidly (Berry et al., 1990;Collier, 1987;Grönroos 1984). However, these articles more often than not deal with questions relating to the definition of quality and the identification of measuring systems for quality management. While the authors recognize the influence on quality of the perceptions of management and service providers, they do not address in detail issues relating to the overall management of resources for the successful delivery of services, in particular, capacity management and the effect on service quality. It is argued in this article that the aspect of the delivery of services which has received insufficient recognition is the management of capacity, although referred to by Collier (1987), Rhyme (1988) and Chase and Bowen (1991).Operations managers in a service organization will either succeed or fail in the process of balancing quality of service and resource management, expressed in terms of resource productivity, depending on their skill in managing capacity to match demand. This article examines more closely the factors in the management of capacity in services which influence quality and productivity performance. It is considered that even though service managers may be concerned about capacity management they tend more to manage capacity by "feel" rather than intent or design to a greater extent than their manufacturing counterparts. This is in contrast to aspects of influencing demand through marketing activities.There is an interaction between capacity management, quality management, and resource productivity or efficiency management which is at the heart of the planning and control process for operations management in services. A number of authors have identified some of the issues confronting operations managers in managing supply and demand in services which affect their ability to maintain quality standards while achieving productivity targets (Chase and
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.