Towards a Theory of Service
Improvisation Competence
Enrico Secchi
Ph.D. Candidate, Clemson University
Aleda V. Roth
Burlington Industries Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management, Clemson University
The Art & Science of Service
8-10 June 2011, IBM Research – Almaden
San Jose, California
Service Improvisation CompetenceTM
The aggregate ability of the firms’ employees to
deviate from established service processes in
order to timely respond to unanticipated events,
using the available resources.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Research Goal
The purpose of this research is threefold:
1. Define the meaning and role of improvisation in a service
context;
2. Develop a set of service delivery system design choices
that create the ability to improvise (Service Improvisation
Competence);
3. Investigate the effectiveness of the development of a
Service Improvisation Competence in managing
variability in service systems.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Variability in Service Systems
Definition of Service Improvisation Competence (SIC)
Antecedents of Service Improvisation Competence
Outcomes of Service Improvisation Competence
Conclusions
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Customer-Induced Variability
• Customers introduce variation in service systems (Berry 1980, Chase and Tansik
1983, Frei 2006)
• The management of such variability significantly impacts service outcomes
(Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault 1990)
• Two approaches to variability management in service operations:
Approach
Reduction of
Variability
Adaptation to
Variability
Example
A service firm can “teach” customers about
their expected behavior in the service
production process (e.g. McDonald’s taught us
to clean our table)
A service firm can provide unexpected
accommodations for customers’ needs (e.g.
Southwest airline employee providing food and
care for a distressed customer)
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Goal
Long-term efficiency gain
(cost reduction)
Gain in customer loyalty
(increase in revenue)
Managing Customer-Induced Variability:
Variability-Reduction Approach
Customer
Requests/Expectations
Reduce Customer
Choice
(Frei 2006)
Variation in
Service
Processes
Service Delivery System
Standardize
Processes
Decouple Front
and Back Office
(Chase 1981; Chase and
Tansik 1983)
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
(Levitt 1976; Shostack,
1984)
Problems with Variability Reduction
Feasibility
Effectiveness
• Reducing customer choices
can be feasible only up to
some point (without loosing
competitiveness)
• The customer might require
a significant amount of faceto-face time
• A decrease in variance can
convey the feeling of a less
personalized service (John
et al. 2006)
• Standardization can detract
from the feeling of
authenticity essential in
many face to face services
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Managing Customer-Induced Variability:
SDS
Responses
Adapting to Variability
D: Set of disturbances := d1, d2,…
R: Set of responses := r1, r2,…
Customer-Induced
Variability
…
r1
r2
r3
…
d1
S
z21
z31
…
d2
z21
S
z32
…
d3
z31
z23
S
…
…
…
…
To achieve a satisfactory
outcome, the set of
responses has to be as
large as the
set of disturbances
…
The Law of Requisite Variety suggests that “only variety in R can force
down variety due to D; variety can destroy variety” (Ashby 1956, p.207).
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
The Role of Improvisation
• The ability to deviate from established processes and routines
can provide an efficient and effective way to multiply the set
of responses in high-contact services:
– The use of improvisation reduces the need for detailed contingency
planning, therefore avoiding the potential waste involved in excessive
planning (John, Grove, and Fisk 2005)
– The use of improvisation allows for the delivery of a more personalized
and authentic service experience (Victorino, Verma, and Wardell 2008)
These benefits are contingent on the other elements that
characterize the service offering, such as the service
concept and the target market
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
A brief background of
Organizational Improvisation
• The idea of organizational improvisation was first advanced as
a useful metaphor to understand coordination and adaptation
within organizations (Barrett and Peplowski 1998; Moorman
and Miner 1998; Weick 1998)
• Research moved beyond the analogy with Jazz music and
theater, and characterized as a distinct organizational
phenomenon (Crossan and Sorrenti 2002; Kamoche et al.
2003; Vera and Crossan 2005)
• The concept of organizational improvisation is closely linked
to the distinction between planned and realized strategies
(Mintzberg 1978, 1994; Brown and Eisenhardt 1997).
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Definitions of
Organizational Improvisation
Definition
“The degree to which the composition and execution of an action converge in time”
(Moorman and Miner 1998, p. 698)
“reworking precomposed material and designs in relation to unanticipated ideas
conceived, shaped, and transformed under the special conditions of performance,
thereby adding unique features to every creation”(Weick 1998, p.543)
Main Themes
Spontaneity
Creativity
Bricolage
“the conception of action as it unfolds, by an organization and/or its members, drawing
on the available cognitive, affective, social and material resources” (Cunha et al. 1999,
p.302)
Spontaneity
Bricolage
“Intuition guiding actions in a spontaneous way” (Crossan and Sorrenti 2002, p.29)
Spontaneity
“the creative and spontaneous process of trying to achieve an objective in a new way”
(Vera and Crossan 2005, p. 205)
Creativity
Spontaneity
“[Improvisation] can be seen as a combination if intuition, creativity, and bricolage that is
driven by time pressures” (Leybourne and Sadler-Smith 2006, p.484)
Creativity
Bricolage
“The ability to creatively adapt” (John et al. 2006, p.248)
Creativity
“the creative and spontaneous behavior of managing
unexpected
The Art &an
Science
of Serviceevent”
2011 (Magni et al.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
San Jose, California
2009, p.1045)
Creativity
Spontaneity
Designing
Service Improvisation Competence
• Given the relevance of the theatrical aspect of experiential
services to our research, we adopt Voss, Roth, and Chase’s
(2008) terminology, and refer to design choices as follows:
– Stageware choices concern the physical appearance and layout of the
service environment (structural choices)
– Orgware choices concern management systems and organizational
policies (infrastructural choices)
– Linkware choices concern communication and information exchange
systems (integration choices)
– Customerware choices concern when and how the customer
encounter takes place
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Stageware
Ability to
evaluate
System State
Availability
and
Accessibility
of Resources
SIC
The physical environment of
services has been recognized as
an important driver of service
operations effectiveness and
outcomes (Bitner 1992; Grove
and Fisk 1992)
Proposition 1. The design of an operating environment that is accessible and
transparent increases the relative degree of SIC.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Orgware
Empowerment
Problem Solving
Oriented
Incentive
Structure
Training
Hiring for
Attitude
SIC
In order to provide employees
with the freedom and correct
incentives to improvise, the
orgware should be designed to
encourage trial and error
activities and provide
employees with the knowledge
and freedom to make
judgment calls (Hartline and
Ferrel 1996, Weick 1998)
Proposition 2. Organizational design choices that foster and encourage employee
empowerment, provide incentives that stimulate personal initiative, seek
employees with a service attitude, and offer the necessary mentoring and training
The Art & Science
Service
forandemployees
to consciously
actofon
the2011
system increase SIC.
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Roth, 2011
San Jose, California
Linkware
Information
Exchange
Activities
SIC
Use of
Information
Systems
In order to allow rapid and
effective actions, the
employees’ cognitive load
must be reduced by
disseminating relevant
information both horizontally
and vertically within the
organization (Galbraith 1973)
Proposition 3. Linkware design choices that serve to increase the frequency and
quality of vertical and horizontal information exchanges about processes and
customers increase SIC
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Customerware
Degree
of
Scripting
(-)
SIC
The literature on organizational
improvisation suggests that, in
order to allow for improvisation,
the service encounter should be
based on procedures that are not
too complex or binding, referred
to as minimal structures (Kamoche
et al. 2003; Cunha et al. 2009).
Proposition 4. Customerware design choices that rely on minimal scripting in the
service encounter increase SIC
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Outcomes of
Service Improvisation Competence
• We propose that the ability of the high-contact service
employees to respond through improvisation to unexpected
events will produce two important outcomes:
– Increase customer satisfaction by proactively adapt to
customers’ preferences and special requests
– Increase the amount of service innovation through a continuous
effort to meet customers’ needs which are unfulfilled by the
current system, and through experimenting with variations of
service delivery processes.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Customer Satisfaction
Service
Concept
SIC
Customer
Satisfaction
In high-touch service systems,
the ability to accommodate
each individual customer
request can be an important
differentiator.
Proposition 5a. The development of a Service Improvisation Competence
increases customer satisfaction.
Proposition 5b. The relationship between SIC and customer satisfaction is
moderated by the characteristics of the service concept (e.g. customization,
experiential content).
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Service Innovation
Feedback
Mechanisms
SIC
Service
Innovation
The use of improvisation will
increase the frequency by which new
ideas and solutions are found
(Eisenhardt and Tabrizi, 1995; Miner
et al., 2001; Bansler and Havn, 2003).
However, the amount of innovations
will depend on the presence of
systems to retain the newfound
solutions (Miner et al., 2001).
Proposition 6a. The development of a Service Improvisation Competence
increases the frequency in number of service innovations.
Proposition 6b. The relationship between SIC and service innovations is positively
moderated by the presence of systems that allow for the dissemination and
retention of successful innovations.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Contributions
• With this research, we offer several contributions to the
literature and practice of service delivery systems design
1.
2.
3.
We propose SIC as a way to manage customer-induced variability in
services, alongside other methods offered by previous service
operations literature.
By operationally defining the construct of Service Improvisation
Competence, we enrich the understanding of service experiences
with the insights that come from the organizational improvisation
literature, as well as posing the basis for rigorous empirical analysis.
We build an empirical model that identifies the general
characteristics of the service delivery design elements that influence
the development of the ability to improvise, as well as its
performance oucomes.
Copyright Secchi and Roth, 2011
The Art & Science of Service 2011
San Jose, California
Questions?
Thank You!