Complexity of internal services: Scale development and validation

Conceptualizing and Measuring Perceived Service Complexity

“…Work in the operations management literature assesses the complexity of a service on the basis of process outcomes differentiating between service complicatedness and difficulty (Soteriou and Chase 1998;De Castro Lobo et al 2010;Kreye et al 2015). Work in organizational behaviour mostly focus on the complexity of the tasks employees have to carry out and rarely explore service complexity from the service provider's point of view (Chen et al 2001;Braun and Hadwich 2016). In a similar vein, the marketing literature often treats service complexity as an objective service attribute, which remains the same for a given service, regardless of employees' perceptions of it (e.g.…”

“…In a similar vein, the marketing literature often treats service complexity as an objective service attribute, which remains the same for a given service, regardless of employees' perceptions of it (e.g. Shostack 1987;Braun and Hadwich 2016). Recent work also considers service complexity from a customer perspective and explores its impact on customers' experience with the firm (Mikolon et al 2015;Balaji et al 2017).…”

“…Aksin and Masini 2008) or an internal supplier perspective (e.g. Braun and Hadwich 2016;, none of them incorporates FLEs' views, despite that they are the key stakeholders affected from service inseparability during service delivery. Following an extensive review of the concept across the OB, services and operation literatures, three major dimensions underlying PSC emerge: Task-Related Complexity, Customer-Derived Complexity and Service Nature-Derived Complexity.…”

“…A critical but relatively unchallenged aspect of successful service design and implementation is associated with the understanding of complexity's impact on the service delivery process, which is rooted in service interactions (Shostack 1987) and has important implications for the experience of both sides of the service encounter (i.e. FLEs and customers) (Braun and Hadwich 2016;Mikolon et al 2015).…”

“…Second, high levels of service complexity might require the development of more detailed job descriptions and more customized training on the tasks that FLEs need to undertake. As a result, service organizations cannot accurately act upon the negative outcomes of FLEs' perceptions of service complexity without scrutinizing their perceived job demands due to service complexity and thus its impact on their service delivery efforts needs to be charted (Braun and Hadwich 2016;.…”