A systemic design for mass customized service delivery in higher education institutions

A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

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逢甲大學 e-Theses & Dissertations (2019)

逢 甲 大 學

商 學 博 士 學 位 學 程

博士論文

高等教育機構大量客製服務傳送的系統化

設計

A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE

DELIVERY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

指導教授：頼文祥 博士

研 究 生：Pham Thuy Duong

中 華 民 國 一 百 零 八 年 九 月

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The objective of this chapter is to present an overview of the present

research. In order to accomplish this objective, this chapter is organized

as follows: Section 1.1 presents the background of the research; Section

1.2 hightlights the significance of the study and definitions of key terms;

Section 1.3 presents the major contributions of the present research to the

fields of service mass customizaion and systems thinking applications;

Section 1.4 describes research questions and research gap; Section 1.5

describes the objectives of the study and motivation; Section 1.6 proposes

the theoretical framework; Section 1.7 provides a brief description of the

research approach to the dissertation; Finally, Section 1.8. presents the

delimitations of the study.

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1.1. Research background

The World Declaration on Higher Education highlights the need to

develop student services worldwide. It is imperative that higher education

institutions (HEIs) provide services and programs that promote the

quality of student life, to meet its needs and to improve learning and

success achievements (Ludeman, 2002). The declaration is considered as

the vision for student service operationalization. The major functions of

student services and administrations in any universities include admission,

academic registry, fees and finance affairs, international affairs, central

examinations, graduations, timetabling, customer services for students,

and student information system. Most of HEIs have identified the mission

to provide the highest quality service to students due to student centricity

approach. To implement this mission in reality however is a challenge for

universities where there is an increasing heterogeneity in student demands

while the paradox of efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery is

always a dilema. In addition in the context of muticultural academic

diversity, stimulated by globalization, there is a continual growth and

diversification (Audin et al., 2003) in students’ demand especially in the

context of strong competitions among universities.

Several universities are looking for innovative ways to gain

competitive advantage over their rivals, as well as to create value for

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students in terms of student experience and through administrative

efficiency (Dunnion and O’Donovan, 2014). Derived from viewing

students as customers with continual diversification, there is a need for

service staff at universities to provide mass-customised services (MCS)

and this cannot be achieved unless there is a departure from a

mass-production approach (Pine, 1993).

The mass-production approach is based on standardising work

procedures in which university staff members need to handle students’

demands in a repetitive manner, with detailed descriptions of service

procedures, dialogue scripts, and after-contact work standards (Jaaron and

Backhouse, 2013). This standardisation of procedures, however, is

perceived to increase the mechanisation of the student-employee contact

and harm students’ satisfaction with HEIs (Dunnion and O’Donovan,

2014). Therefore, the transfer from product-oriented economies to

service-oriented ones, as witnessed in the most developed countries, has

fuelled attempts in the HEIs to migrate from mass production models to

Mass Customisation (MC) ones (Tien, 2011).

When moving to an MC approach, one of the major challenges to

confront HEIs is their ability to develop an MC service strategy, which is

dependent on the choice of a proper service operations design (Da

Silveira et al., 2001; Moon et al., 2011). In addition, when considering

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how to design services from which customers can ‘pull value’– i.e. get

what they want – Seddon (2008) believes that it is critical to shift from

thinking of the system as one that pulls physical things together to

manufacture at the rate of customer demand to thinking of the system as

one that offers services together in response to the variety of customer

demands, called ‘systems-thinking’. Developed since 2003 by Seddon,

the terminology of ‘systems-thinking’ used throughout this paper to

describe the service delivery system has emerged from the translation to

the service sector of lean manufacturing principles (Seddon and Brand,

2008), incorporating Deming’s intervention theory (1982) together with

Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (1981).

According to Jaaron and Backhouse (2013), the employment of the

systems-thinking approach for service operations design has a significant

impact on the service-offering organisations in terms of providing a

real-time mass-customised service. Although MC of student services is

essential and beneficial to universities as a sharp weapon in the

competition, as analysed above, little attention has been paid by previous

empirical studies to models and tools that can operationalise MC in

universities.

Therefore, there is a need to conduct this research: “A SYSTEMIC

DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN

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HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS” to investigate the impact of

applying the systems-thinking approach on universities’ abilities to

provide mass-customised services for their students.

1.2. Significance of the study

Firstly, the study introduced universities to an innovative model

choice of systems thinking to implement service operations and delivery

effectively & efficiently, which could seamlessly response to the

continuous changes and diversification in student/ customer needs.

Secondly, due to proper model choice of service delivery design it

could create value for students in terms of student experience and

administrative efficiency and consequently contribute to enhance

universities’ competitive advantage over their rivals.

Further, the most striking significance is to make success for both the

students and the institution.

+ For Institutions: if an institution follows the systems-thinking

principles to deliver mass-customized services for students’

continuously-changed demands, it tends to become a learning

organization, which could gain unique competitive edge. As a result, the

enrollment rate of both domestic and international students would

increase, the service staff capability would be enhanced, and the

International Outlook criteria in university ranking would be satisfied.

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+ For Top Management Team and operations manager: it helps Top

Management Team and operations managers realize the benefits of

transfering from the top-down hierarchy perspective of Command and

control thinking to outside-in system one of systems-thinking, which

makes a great innovation in operations management of service

departments/ institutions.

+ For students: if students’ service demand could be met at the first

contact, the value creation would be optimized and get student

satisfaction. As a result, it would contribute to the quality of students

learning experience and their academic success.

Overall, there are several managerial implications for universities

adopting the model of systems-thinking to implement their strategies of

MC in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. It helps

university administrators accordingly to know what to do and where to

start in their endeavor to design an MC service-delivery system based on

systems-thinking.

Definition of the key terms

Student services are services related to student affairs which are

delivered to meet demands of diverse student population as individuals

and as subgroups (Ludeman, 2002) such as admission, academic registry,

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finance affairs, international affairs, customer services, testing, graduation,

etc.

Mass customization (MC) is the process of providing a

one-of-a-kind product without sacrificing the benefits of scale economies

(Davis, 1987)

Mass customized services (MCS) is the use of flexible processes

and organizational structures to produce varied and often individually

customized products and services at the low-cost of a standardized,

mass-production product (Hart, 1994; Pine, 1993)

Systems-thinking principles (STP) is defined as redesigning

service operations around and from customer demand instead of

functional hierarchies (Seddon, 2003& 2008).

Higher education institutions (HEIs) designates organizations

providing higher, postsecondary, tertiary, and/or third-level education.

1.3. Contributions to the field

To best of my knowledge, this research firstly contributes to the

fulfillment of the gap of MC in service operations (Da Silveira et al,

2001).

The value of this research secondly is the development of Systems

theory applications in service operations through the design for mass

customized service operationalization model for higher education

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organizations.

Another major contribution of this study is to be able to respond to

the need of academic discussion of systems thinking approach due to its

significant impact on practice (Jackson, 2009).

Further, one of the most significant contribution of this research is to

create a measurement scale of the relationship between Systems-thinking

design and mass – customised service capabilty of a higher education

institution for student service operations, shortly termed as ST-MCS.

Last but not least, this research provided academic researchers with

empirical evidences from Europe and Asia to support the operational

model of MCS using systems- thinking approach.

1.4. Research questions and research gaps

O’Donovan (2010) argued that the prevailing ‘command and control’

(Seddon 2003) management logic, which can be found at work

throughout both the public and private sectors, is the primary cause of

inferior and expensive service. Based on their findings, they suggested an

alternative way using Principles of Systems-thinking (Jackson et al. 2008),

whilst comparing and contrasting this with the flawed thinking which

currently prevails. In addition, Jaaron and Backhouse (2013) showed that

the systems-thinking principles for service operations design have a great

influence on the ability of service-offering organizations to deliver a

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real-time MCS. Although the importance of MCS is significant as

analyzed above, few studies were previously conducted and there still

need more empirical studies to prove the possibility of operationalizing

MCS at HEIs following systems-thinking design. Therefore, the first

research questions was formed as follows:

1. How does the systems-thinking principles impact on universities’

abilities to provide MCS for their students in the UK?

Although a few studies in the UK indicated that the systems-thinking

approach has significantly enhanced the universities’ ability to design

MCS, which are more able to absorb diversified student demand, this

exposes a gap that we need to use different HEIs in different cultures and

sittings to ensure that these constructs do not confound results. Hence, it

is really meaningful if we could find a case from Asia to validate

correlates of systems-thinking principles and MCS for students. As a

consequence, the following basic research question has been still

unanswered.

2. How are the correlates of systems thinking principles and mass

customized service delivery for students at Asian universities?

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1.5. Objectives of the study and motivation

This study was conducted to investigate the impact of

systems-thinking principles (Seddon, 2003) on operationalizing the ‘mass

customization’ capability of student services at HEIs in both Europe and

Asia.

This study was divided into the two following stages:

Stage 1: based on a case study conducted in one of the UK’s leading

universities in the east midlands region of England, Stage 1 of this

research empirically explored the determinants of mass customization as

a result of systems-thinking in service delivery in the HEIs. A conceptual

framework must be created for universities to follow in this regard. The

conceptual framework would help university administrators, accordingly,

to know what to do and where to start in their endeavour to design an MC

service-delivery system based on systems-thinking.

Stage 2: based on the conceptual model designed for MC in higher

education from Stage 1, Stage 2 of this research aimed to validate the

correlates of systems thinking principles and mass customized service

delivery for students at Asian universities, particularly in two dynamic

universities in Taiwan.

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1.6. Theoretical Framework

Anchored on the present literature about mass customization and

systems-thinking principles, a conceptual framework was proposed to

illustrate the different levels of the principles of systems-thinking

impacting MCS capability including human resource level (i.e. micro

determinants), operational level (i.e. meso determinants), and functional

level (i.e. macro determinants). The relationships between these three

organisational levels were represented in Figure 1.1 as a the theoretical

framework.

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Figure 1.1. Theoretical Framework

MCS capability

System design at Macro level

(Functional Dimension)

System design at Micro level

(Human Resource Dimension)

System design at Meso level

(Operational Dimension)

Systems-thinking

Principles

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1.7. Research approach

A mixed research design (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998) with

quantitative and qualitative data sources as shown in Figure 1.2 was

relevant for achieving the objective of this research.

In the first stage, a qualitative case study was conducted in one of the

UK’s leading universities to empirically explore the systems-thinking

relationship with enhancing the MC ability of admission and academic

registry services in the HEIs through the realisation of the determinants of

MC of students’ service operationalization in a systemic design.

In the second stage, a quantitative methodology was employed in two

of the most dynamic universities in Taiwan to validate the correlates of

systems-thinking principles and mass customization capability of

students’ service delivery through testing the constructed model from

Stage 1.

Finally, to mitigate the impacts of "Omitted Variable Bias" (OVB), a

number of in-depth interviews with operations managers and service

staffs, as sources of another qualitative study, were conducted in order to

reconfirm the correlates of Systems-thinking and MCS capability.

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Figure 1.2. Research Flow

 Literature Review

 Case study

 Semi-structured interviews

 Focus group

 Observation and archival document

Explore the relationship between Systems thinking

and MCS capability and the preliminary influential

factors

 Design questionairre for obtaining the key

factors of MCS

 Cronbach’s Alpha of the ten groups of

factors

 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to

describe variability among the observed,

correlated variables

 Structural equation modeling (SEM) for

hypotheses testing

Determine the key determinants of MCS

operationalization in HEIs as a result of

systems-thinking principles in Taiwanese HEIs.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research

In- depth interviews to mitigate the impacts of

Omitted Variable Bias (OVB)

Quantitive research

Confirm the correlates of Systems-thinking and

MCS capability