KVALITA INOVÁCIA PROSPERITA III/1-2 1999 (1-23)

 

INNOVATION AND INTEGRATION IN PUBLIC SERVICE MANAGEMENT

INOVÁCIA A INTEGRÁCIA V RIADENÍ ŠTÁTNEJ SPRÁVY

ADRIENNE CURRY AND ALEXANDRIA BRYSLAND

 

1. INTRODUCTION

The nature of public service provision is changing on account of new strategic approaches to control and delivery. The main underlying objectives are those of increasing value for money and emphasising the role of the consumer. Responsibilities are more than ever decentralised to service providers whilst overall control remains centralised in the form of various customer charters. Provision of consistent service quality is becoming more difficult in the context of resource constraints and the need to achieve economies of scale. Furthermore, people are demanding more and better services whilst paying the same or less tax. New contractual relations have arisen both in local government and healthcare between purchasers and providers, which have highlighted the need for service level agreements and a focus on customer requirements and service specifications.

The inherent complexity of the public service environment throws up a number of difficulties and potential conflicts. The identification of the customer of public services is not straightforward. Customers of local government may be individuals, community or interest groups, elected members, MP’s or society as a whole. These customers or stakeholders may or may not pay for, receive or benefit from the services provided, which further complicates the issue. Different customer or stakeholder groups may well have different expectations of the same service or have different service priorities. Comparative research projects involving different customer and stakeholder groups are now being conducted to help clarify some of these complexities (McNicol 1997, Stark 1998).

Another sphere of complexity and hence potential conflict is that of decision making. Are public service decisions made locally or at the national level? Who sets the priorities for the services to be provided? Decisions in local government may be made by central government, council managers or officers, elected members, political parties or local pressure groups. Healthcare decisions may be made by central government, healthcare managers, clinicians or special interest groups. Accountability may well take priority over efficiency or effectiveness and economy may be more important than quality. In other words, the flexibility of public services to meet customer or consumer expectations may be constrained to a greater or lesser extent according to who decides how much the services will cost to provide, how they will be provided and by whom.

Inevitably linked to the issue of control is the issue of measurement. There is a clear need for public service standards and performance indicators so that service users know what they can expect and service providers know whether or not they are doing a good job. Performance indicators refer to ”consumer interest” but have tended to measure processes and the numbers of people served rather than consumer perceptions and other service outputs. The difficulty seems to be a concentration of effort on measuring high volume rather than high quality and on measuring what is readily available and collectable rather than what is really relevant. Performance indicators in the public service environment have more often than not engendered staff demotivation and cynicism, given the remit to increase service quality whilst cutting costs. Future willingness of public service staff to be involved in service quality initiatives may well be in jeopardy. Measuring what really matters in services is the only way forward. This entails a combination of innovative management thinking and the use of robust, validated measurement tools.

 

2. NEW AGENDAS IN PUBLIC SERVICES

    1. Healthcare

The latest government White Paper ”Designed to Care” (1997) has underlined the key objective of the National Health Service being designed for patients in order to provide better services for them in ways that are responsive to their needs and wishes. This means that good quality healthcare must be delivered consistently and to a high standard. The underlying principles of such a renewed National Health Service are:

  • Co-ordination and reliability of care
  • Clinical effectiveness
  • Accurate information for doctors on safe, cost-effective treatments
  • Patient involvement
  • Patient information
  • Responsiveness to the public
  • Openness

 

2.2 Local Government

Two essential issues need to be considered and these are Best Value and the Balanced Scorecard.

The Best Value Regime has replaced CCT (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) with the intention of retaining the competitive element over the compulsory element and of delivering value for money services. The underlying principles are those of sound governance, performance improvement measuring and monitoring and continuous improvement and competition.

Sound Governance

A customer and citizen focus aims to improve access, responsiveness and accountability at all levels with better publicity of local authority decisions, policies, services and performance.

Sound strategic management means setting a clear direction for the local authority as a whole , linked to a process of continuous improvement which can be assessed and measured.

Sound operational management involves putting in place the right arrangements for managing services more effectively and ensuring managers have greater control over resources, decision-making and performance.

Sound financial management ensures effective use of financial resources to provide value for money.

Performance Improvement Measuring and Monitoring

A performance culture must be established throughout the organisation with an emphasis on continuous improvement, monitoring, assessing and measuring performance at the strategic, service and local levels. Sound management information systems are also needed to ensure that performance data is both robust and clearly understandable.

Continuous Improvement and Competition

A mixed economy approach to procurement of goods and services aims to improve quality, efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery on an ongoing basis. Benchmarking performance at the corporate and service level helps achieve measurable service improvement with certain activities reviewed on a regular basis.

The Balanced Scorecard approach arose from research into performance measurement in a number of leading international companies and aims to address the traditional management problem of being unable to link long-term strategy with short-term actions. Overall performance of an organisation has to be clearly connected to its key strategies and priorities. The approach to the scorecard has been adapted by the Accounts Commission for Scotland (June 1998) for use in the public sector, having originally been constructed for use in the private sector. The key objectives of the approach are to help public service organisations to get better at what they do and to move from being financially driven to being mission driven. It encapsulates the four following perspectives:

  • The customer perspective, whereby the organisation has clear strategies for meeting customer/consumer needs and has performance measures that will help assess customer and stakeholder expectations, perceptions and levels of satisfaction.

  • The internal business process perspective, whereby the organisation must identify the key business processes it has to be good at, measure performance in undertaking those processes and establish targets for improving performance.

  • The continuous improvement perspective, whereby the organisation achieves continuous improvement in delivering quality, cost-effective services by learning, coping with change and improving through its systems, its people and its infrastructure.

  • The financial perspective, whereby the organisation has key measures of financial performance but these are directly linked to overall organisational goals.

This Balanced Scorecard approach is intended to supplement traditional financial performance measures with additional measures to assess overall strategic performance.

 

3. TECHNIQUES

So where do we go from here? Given the new agendas in the public service context, management approaches need to be proposed and field tested to check their potential usefulness. It is inherently dangerous to give the impression that certain management tools and techniques are infallible and therefore must be adopted at all costs. Regrettably this has tended to be the case with some quality management initiatives, such as ISO 9000 standards and Total Quality Management implementation. There is a whole range of possibilities from which organisations must make appropriate choices to suit their particular situation. There is no definitive solution to fit all organisations and the purpose of this paper is not to suggest techniques and frameworks which have to be used but which may be helpful in addressing some of the issues central to public service management. Each of the techniques is explained in turn with case illustration from relevant field work carried out either in local government or healthcare. Frameworks incorporating the techniques are then presented so that sequential development and logical integration can be seen. The techniques are: Servqual, Quality Function Deployment, Process Mapping and Benchmarking. The frameworks are: the Business Excellence Model and the Service Quality Loop.

 

3.1 Servqual

The Servqual approach (Parasuraman et al. 1985) begins with the assumption that service quality is critically determined by the difference between customers’ expectations and their perceptions of the service actually delivered. This approach has been subject to a number of criticisms with respect to potential difficulties in asking customers what they expect ( Cronin & Taylor 1992, 1994; Teas 1993, 1994). Indeed, customers may in fact not be able to formulate their expectations and may, in the event of doubt, expect far too much. Measuring expectations may risk to complicate issues of service management if care is not taken. In one of the cases that follow it was decided to ask about perceptions before expectations and this did seem to work well. In any event it is important to decide what is actually required in terms of outcomes from any field application of tools and techniques.

The Servqual model identifies 10 criteria by which to evaluate service quality:

Tangibles: The appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication material

Reliability: The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately

Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

Assurance: A combination of competence (possession of the required skills and knowledge to perform the service); courtesy (politeness, respect, consideration and friendliness of contact staff); credibility (trustworthiness, believability and honesty of staff); security (freedom from danger, risk and doubt)

Empathy: A combination of access (approachability and ease of contact); communication (keeping customers informed in a language they understand and listening to them); understanding the customer (making an effort to know the customers and their needs).

Research was also carried out to look at the potential for service quality shortfalls as a result of the behaviour of the service provider and the ways in which organisational business processes were being managed. This revealed 4 gaps in the process of delivering service and their causes:

GAP 1: Customers’ Expectations v Management Perceptions resulting from a lack of a marketing research orientation, inadequate upward communication and too many layers of management

GAP 2: Management Perceptions v Service Specifications resulting from inadequate commitment to service quality, a perception of unfeasibility, inadequate task standardisation and an absence of goal setting

GAP 3: Service Specifications v Service Delivery resulting from staff role ambiguity and conflict, poor employee-job fit and poor technology-job fit, inappropriate supervisory control systems, lack of perceived control and lack of teamwork.

GAP 4: Service Delivery v External Communications as a result of inadequate horizontal communications and a propensity to over-promise

GAP 5: Customer Expectations (influenced by the extent of personal needs, word of mouth recommendation and past service experiences) v Customer Perceptions of the service delivered (resulting from influences exerted from the customer side and the shortfalls (gaps) on the part of the service provider.

The model is illustrated in Figure 1.

 

3.2 Applications of Servqual

There have been several field work initiatives conducted with respect to the practical application of Servqual (e.g. Dalrymple et al. 1995, Donnelly et al. 1995, Curry et al. 1997, McNicol 1997, Durden 1997, Stark 1998) of which three have been selected for the purpose of this paper. The first case relates to a public careers advisory service in Scotland (see Durden, 1997) and demonstrates the potential usefulness of applying the model to internal customers of the service, thereby highlighting service provider issues.

In terms of researching Gap 1, a comparison was made between perceptions of management and expectations of customers. Management appeared to have over-estimated the importance of all the service dimensions apart from responsiveness. Analysis of the causes of Gap 1 produced scores not significantly below the optimum of seven. The levels of management cause yielded the smallest gap score of the three, which is not surprising, given the small size of the organisation.

As for Gap 2, managers found the widest gap with empathy, followed by assurance. Customers also felt the widest gap to be with empathy but assurance exceeded their expectations. A smaller negative gap score for reliability from customers could be accounted for by the fact that formal standards for empathy are more difficult to produce than for reliability, given the more intuitive, abstract nature of the former dimension. Causes of Gap 2 were seen by managers as relating very closely to the absence of reward and recognition for managers providing a high quality of service as opposed to those who do not. This issue is indeed a problematic one in the public service context.

In the service performance gap (Gap 3), staff rated themselves as performing well on responsiveness, a dimension in which customers’ expectations had in fact been exceeded, but rated tangibles much lower than customers. This differential was also found between residents and relatives of the nursing home service, to be discussed more fully later in this paper. There is an inevitable tendency for those spending more time in a particular physical environment to find fault with the tangibles dimension as opposed to those visiting it on a more infrequent basis. Teamwork and employee-job fit were rated highly by staff who performed well and enjoyed a good team spirit. Supervisory control, relating to performance measurement, showed however a significant gap with staff clearly believing there was little incentive to improve service quality, a result correlating with the response from managers.

Gap 4 was shown to be relatively small overall, over-promising not being so relevant in a context with no direct advertising. There remains however the need to co-ordinate and integrate across departments and staff did not feel their knowledge and experience were taken into account as much as might have been desirable.

 

The second case example shows the use of Servqual to measure external customer expectations and perceptions over three customer sets (see McNicol, 1997). These were primary school head teachers, secondary school head teachers and parents, all recipients of the psychological services for children.

All respondents placed tangibles as least important. For primary schools and parents reliability was most important, whilst secondary schools rated responsiveness ahead of reliability. Parents rated assurance above empathy, knowledge and competence of psychologists being clearly more important than individualised attention. For primary schools empathy was more important than responsiveness, probably because of their closer working relationship with the psychologists.

The largest P – E (perceptions – expectations) score for primary schools related to availability and accessibility of services to pupils, underlining time and resource constraints that are no doubt tricky to resolve. Willingness to help and prompt response to enquiries were highlighted by both primary and secondary schools, which further corroborates the time and availability problem.

Whilst schools also seemed to be indicating they were not as confident in the work of the psychologists as was thought to be the case, P – E gap scores for parents were not as large as those for the schools. For parents the greatest problem appeared to be a lack of clarity at the beginning of the process when they wanted to know what was to be carried out with their child, when and why. This result ran counter to the beliefs of the service providers who assumed that parents were generally satisfied with the service once a child had been referred to it and that their main concerns lay more with the time taken by the referral procedure itself. Parents gave the psychologists full marks for appropriate use of language and an absence of jargon!

 

The third case also involves research into Gap 5 of the Servqual model, this time in the healthcare context. Expectations and perceptions of the nursing home service were measured and comparisons made between the two customer sets: residents and their relatives. The respective priorities of these groups produced clear indications for service planning and management. The perceptions statements were administered to respondents before the expectations statements as they refer to the reality of the service actually being received and were therefore more immediately comprehensible for such an elderly/frail group as the residents.

Residents’ highest expectations came in assurance and responsiveness and their highest gap scores arose in reliability and responsiveness. Empathy was also highlighted as very important whilst tangibles emerged clearly as the lowest priority. For relatives, highest expectations were for assurance and reliability with responsiveness and reliability receiving the highest gap scores. Empathy emerged overall as the highest priority and tangibles as the lowest. Comparison of the data sets confirmed that both customer groups felt the greatest service quality gaps to be in reliability and responsiveness. Areas of dissatisfaction emerged with staff not doing things at the promised time, not providing prompt attention and at times being too busy to respond to requests. The research revealed considerable agreement between residents and their relatives, particularly in respect to priorities focusing on empathy and assurance. In a service of this type, a caring individualised and sincere approach is clearly regarded as of paramount importance alongside the key priority in healthcare, that of ”feeling safe in their hands” (see also Curry and Pagouni, 1997).

Both residents and their relatives had high expectations of the nursing home service, exceeding those found in the home help service (Dalrymple et al. 1995) and in the rehabilitation out-patient service (Curry and Pagouni, 1997). An important outcome of this research was the recognition of staff who were delivering a consistently high level of service (see also Dalrymple et al. 1995). Perception scores were notably high in terms of staff appearance, courtesy willingness to help, having patients’ best interests at heart and ensuring that patients felt safe in their hands. Another issue of importance was that of choice, which in this particular context contributes to positive outcomes and enhanced quality of life (Ryden 1994). Care planning and service delivery should take into account personal preferences of residents and the involvement of their relatives, who need to be kept informed. Residents’ ability to take care of themselves needs to be accurately assessed in order to prevent the development of excessive disability (Allers 1995) with consequent loss of personal control and increased feelings of vulnerability and dependence.

 

3.3 Quality Function Deployment

QFD is based on assessing the strength of customer requirements against the major parameters of the service specifications, termed ‘WANTS’ and ‘HOWS’ respectively. This technique can be used wherever there is a service provider/user relationship and, like the Servqual model, can be applied internally within the organisation and to external customers.

At the basic level QFD consists of a series of components which are applied in sequence. The customer requirements (WANTS) are identified and then ranked in terms of their relative importance. Servqual can be used for this purpose, along with brainstorming exercices within the organisation among those familiar with the business. It can be inherently dangerous to rely purely on customers to determine absolutely what requirements are but it is nonetheless essential to involve them in the process. Major service parameters (HOWS) must then be specified and the relationship between the WANTS and the HOWS established using a  scoring system. HOWS must be ranked in an order of priority that reflects the extent to which a particular HOW contributes to ensuring customer satisfaction.

Further additions to QFD show the direction of improvement of the HOWS and a correlation matrix shows the relationship between each HOW and all the other HOWS. A competitive benchmark analysis compares the performance of individual WANTS with the best of the competition. A further benchmark analysis compares the performance of the HOWS with the competition and finally there can be a field recording of the quantitative specification of each HOW.

QFD can also be used in a sequential mode where the HOWS of the first customer/supplier relationship become the WANTS of the second relationship. This is a particularly powerful tool for strategic planning and helping to break down communication barriers between different organisational levels and will be illustrated in the first case example.

Implementation of QFD involves four steps, which are as follows:

STEP 1: Creating the team – a multi-disciplinary team is formed which includes people from design, marketing, product engineering and any other departments deemed to be relevant.

STEP 2: Establishing what the customer needs – these needs are represented on a list of requirements gathered by members of the team from both internal and external sources by means of recognised questioning techniques.

STEP 3: Generating and selecting ways of meeting needs – the team works out HOW the needs can be met, possibly using brainstorming to generate ideas. The interrelationship between the WANTS and the HOWS is then considered, based on value judgements of the team members. Correlation between the HOWS is evaluated and their relative importance determined.

STEP 4: Preparing for action – the most important HOWS are carried over in priority order to a further matrix where they become the needs input.

 

3.4 Applications of QFD

Case one involves a Scottish Community Education Service covering an extensive urban area which did not have a coherent strategic plan and plans that did exist had not been deployed to lower levels of the organisation or to external customers. This had led to different levels of expectations arising without the resources being available to meet them. Here a strategic planning method was being sought to provide coherence and also to involve providers and users of the service in its operations (see Herbert and Conroy 1997).

Process Mapping is a conceptual top-down approach to define each process or sub-process in terms of objectives or outcomes that have to be produced. The mission of the organisation has to be expressed as a set of corporate objectives that then have to be translated into team or individual objectives at the operational level. In this way people can identify not only their own objectives but also those of their colleagues. This facilitates a greater understanding of how the organisation operates as a whole and therefore enables identification of the critical success factors of service delivery more clearly in terms of a common language. Strategic planning needs to be cascaded throughout the organisation from overview at the top down to successive layers of detail by means of consecutive internal customer-supplier relationships, with each layer having ownership of its particular objectives. In this case these successive layers were: mission statement, core purpose, key objectives and service specifications. The other purpose of process mapping was to provide a structural framework in which successive customer-supplier relationships could be tested using QFD. Furthermore, the service providers’ ideas of customer needs in the form of service standards could ultimately be compared with actual needs expressed by external customers using Servqual.

QFD provided a useful starting point by translating the HOWS of, say, corporate policy into the WANTS of the next organisational level. It was essential at all stages to involve community education staff so that organisational learning could take place at every opportunity. The aim was also to ask a number of strategic planning questions, such as ”where are we going?”; ”why do we exist?”; ”Are our priorities correct?”; ”Do our performance goals relate to what matters most to our customers?”; ”Do staff have the resources and authority to achieve their objectives?” and ”Does everyone in the organisation understand these preceding questions?”

The iterative QFD-driven strategic planning model thus went through the following steps: vision, mission, strengths/weaknesses, performance goals, strategies, implementation and finally results. These steps then fed back up by means of gap analysis to the strengths and weaknesses.

The intention was to test the robustness of the process map definition by using a series of QFD exercices wherever there was a customer-supplier relationship. QFD 1 and 2 covered the link between key objectives, service specifications and service outcomes. QFD 3 compared service specifications with customer needs identified in Servqual sampling of external customers. QFD 2 and 3 could then be tallied, i.e. service outcomes should match customer needs.

One issue of importance that emerged from this research was that the ”language” of service definition required some attention. Community education staff did not understand what senior managers were asking them to do and this provided a key pointer as to where communication within the organisation was breaking down. Furthermore, by clarifying issues using process mapping and QFD it started to become easier to produce relevant performance indicators for the service as a whole. This combined use of QFD and process mapping is illustrated in Figure 2.

Case two relates to a Building Direct Labour Organisation service within a large, geographically widespread English local authority. QFD was used to produce a definitive set of ten performance indicators by a highly motivated and committed group of senior and middle managers. A total of eighteen key business processes were identified and the first stage of the QFD analysis involved examining the relationship of each key process with each other. This revealed both overlaps and interdependencies between these processes and made it easier to determine if additional steps would need to be taken in supporting processes to aid the improvement of the target process. In each case the relationship between two processes was described as strong (allocated 9 points); medium (allocated 3 points) or weak (allocated 1 point). Points were then totaled and processes ranked in order of decreasing importance using a multiplication factor of 1.02 for higher ranking, 0.98 for lower ranking and 1.00 for any process in the middle order.

The second stage of the analysis concerned the relationship between business processes and customer requirements, i.e. establishing the relationship between the HOWS and the WANTS. Once more, the relationship between each was described as strong, medium or weak and allocated the same points as before. Account also had to be taken of the ranking of customer requirements, as determined by the customers themselves. If a business process had a strong relationship with a highly ranked customer requirement, additional points were allocated on a scale from 0 for lowest to 12.5 for highest. This process was designed to show clear prioritisation of each business process capable of making a strong contribution to satisfying key customer requirements.

It was important at this stage to examine not only how key business processes contributed to meeting customer requirements but also to identify any necessary changes to those key processes and any sub-processes. This had to be done in a structured way. A total of 94 tasks were brainstormed, cross-referenced with other tasks to which they were linked and then entered into a matrix with the top six business processes on one axis and the top six customer requirements on the other axis. After consideration of the 94 original tasks, some were eliminated due to direct overlaps with others and a number of tasks were highlighted as being closely inter-linked. The aim of this was to draw up a list of selected and inter-linking tasks that would form the focus of attention in devising a set of relevant performance indicators. The information gathered enabled ten performance indicators to be defined. Indicator description was however merely the starting point as it was also essential to determine how those indicators were to be achieved and then improved upon over time. The resulting framework consisted of a description of the performance indicator, the task split within it, the actions required by it, targets to be achieved and then improved on, measures of the indicator and finally a list of tasks linked to the indicator.

In this particular case a service improvement plan was produced providing clear and structured guidelines as to where efforts in improving service delivery were to be directed. The application of QFD was particularly effective in pinpointing priorities and this case example constitutes an impressive pioneering effort on the part of a group of highly motivated managers to create an innovative way forward in the management of service delivery.

 

3.5 Benchmarking

One important principle of the Best Value Regime is that local authority services demonstrate that they are in fact providing value. Benchmarking and comparative evidence are both key to any approach adopted. There have however been difficulties experienced by some services in finding suitable benchmarks, particularly, as was the case in one local authority, when the aim was to benchmark specific business processes with those in comparable authorities. All that seemed to be available for comparison were financial cost figures relating to the provision of certain services. No doubt this situation will resolve itself as public services travel further down the Best Value learning curve. In the meantime it is perhaps worth beginning with a multi-disciplinary approach using internal benchmarking; section to section, division to division, department to department, thus promoting a domino effect and chain reaction of quality throughout the organisation. External benchmarking can then be initiated from a public and private sector viewpoint. In any event, the benchmarking process involves a series of six steps:

  • Decide what to benchmark
  • Plan the benchmarking project
  • Understand current performance
  • Study others
  • Learn from data
  • Use the findings

One case example of effective benchmarking exists in a Scottish local authority’s secondary schools provision. In terms of examination results, there has been a great deal of statistical data produced over the years to try and establish league tables of both primary and secondary schools. Such statistical comparison can be misleading but their careful use, when key factors such as social deprivation are taken into account, can provide a valuable incentive for improvement and learning with consequent benefits in service provision for customers.

The secondary schools in this particular local authority have subscribed to a benchmarking service on Scottish public examination results, which produces comparisons by subject with schools across the West of Scotland. On the basis of refined comparison between schools with similar socio economic profiles, managers have been able to introduce curricular improvements extending subject choice and refocusing resources to concentrate on areas of greater likely success.

 

4. FRAMEWORKS

A major difficulty with quality management related initiatives over the years is that more often than not they have been regarded as a mixed bag of potential approaches to continuous improvement without any framework to hold them together. A classic example of this emerged with the need for ISO 9000 (BS 5750 as it then was) certification and the attempt by organisations to achieve Total Quality Management. For a long time the two initiatives were seen as having little or no connectivity and managers found their efforts being dispersed and diluted with not a great deal being achieved. Once some sort of common ground had been established, a number of organisations spent a great deal of time deciding which initiative to begin with. In other words, was it necessary to have the structural framework of ISO 9000 certification before embarking on a Total Quality Management programme, or was it preferable to try and establish a Total Quality culture before undertaking ISO 9000? Then came Investors in People and a number of managers, on first hearing about it, regarded it as yet another initiative that had been dreamed up to throw them in a new direction.

Over time organisations have travelled down the learning curve and now there is considerable enlightenment among managers as to how quality management initiatives fit together and can serve each other. What is worrying, however, is that a lot of valuable time has been lost and a good deal of cynicism among managers generated as a result of needless misunderstandings and confusion. The lesson that has to be learnt is that this situation should not be replicated as public service organisations are interpreting and learning to implement Best Value.

The techniques of Servqual, QFD, Process Mapping and Benchmarking and their interrelationships have been explained along with their potential application to field case examples in practice. What is now required is a framework or frameworks to show how they can fit together to form a reasonable cohesive whole that is potentially useful for managers. The frameworks proposed in this paper are the European Business Excellence Model and the Best Value Service Quality Loop.

 

4.1 The European Business Excellence Model

This model provides a tangible framework in which organisations can assess their progress over time in making step improvements in operations. It is also designed to help bring greater cohesion to the different organisational activities.

Extensive research among several hundred public and private companies in Europe has identified nine elements as the key components of business excellence. These are shown in Figure 3. The Enablers relate to the running and operations of the organisation, driving performance upwards. The Results relate to what the organisation has achieved and is achieving from the viewpoint of the stakeholders (customers, staff, the community, funding bodies etc.) and are measured over time against the organisation’s targets, comparing wherever possible with examples of best practice (benchmarking).

Figure 4 shows how the techniques already discussed in this paper and others can fit into this model and be instruments to help drive up performance. It was derived by the Building DLO, featured already in the applications of QFD section. Although at this stage this particular field example had not considered the model in detail, the management group had determined a series of steps as part of their strategic planning process that would fit into the framework of the model and provide tangible direction of actions and priorities. These steps are illustrated in Figures 5, 6 and 7.

Use of the European Business Excellence Model enables organisations to assess themselves from an internal perspective and to be assessed externally to obtain a more objective view of how they are progressing in terms of improving their business performance. The model does provide a useful overarching framework for achieving a number of measures but it represents an ambitious task for organisations unused to having a corporate continuous improvement programme. It is not something to be rushed into without careful prior consideration of the relevant steps and techniques involved along the way. If this is not done, there may arise the serious risk of this model being seen as too complex and as yet another quality initiative with a short shelf life, lacking sustainability over time.

 

4.2 The Best Value Service Quality Loop

This model has been derived by the authors of this paper to draw together more closely the quality management techniques and the public service context. It relates very directly to the principles of Best Value. The Loop is illustrated in Figure 8 but it is also worthwhile discussing the elements of it in a little more detail to see more clearly their interrelationships and the iterative, sequential nature of the Loop as a whole.

The Four ‘E’s as the main aims and objectives effectively constitute the beginning and the end of the Loop. They respond to the need for sound governance by involving the customer and striving to repair the democratic deficit which has tended to overshadow public services in the past. The importance of educating and empowering the public cannot be overstated. Without good information and involvement in the decision-making process, the public see themselves as controlled, dictated to and provided with services with which they are dissatisfied. The 2 ‘E’s of enquiring and expectations relate to the need to be seeking out improvements on an ongoing basis and defining expectations in the form of service specifications, so that the public can be assured of best efforts in service provision and know where they stand in terms of exactly what is available to them.

The Quality Information System forms part of the performance management and monitoring process and gathers data from a variety of perspectives, such as the following:

  • Measurement of perceptions and expectations (including use of Servqual)
  • Performance measurement comparing to both the public and private sectors (benchmarking)
  • Identification of service failures and corrective action (complaint/comment data and analysis)
  • Staff surveys to seek opinions as to working practices (including use of Servqual)
  • Measurement of staff performance to guide appropriate training and development
  • Collecting customer suggestions as to potential service improvement activities
  • Identification of trends, patterns and demographics.

 

Quality Function Deployment is used to help implement sound governance through improved long-term planning and budgeting. It takes the results from research exercices such as Servqual and translates them into customer characteristics, followed by service design, service specifications and better service delivery.

 

The Balanced Scorecard Approach measures performance across the four interrelated areas of the customer, the internal business processes, continuous improvement and finance. This also contributes to performance management and monitoring and strives to improve long-term planning and budgeting.

 

The European Business Excellence Model groups all the elements of the organisation into the framework for continuous business improvement and potential external certification. As a result the organisation can be better placed to provide the Four ‘E’s and the cycle of the Loop begins again.

 

5. CONCLUSION

This paper has explained and illustrated the use of a number of techniques that potentially have a role to play in fulfilling the objectives of the new agendas in the management and delivery of public services. The two frameworks show that these techniques can also be integrated and serve one another rather than appearing as a disparate mixed bag of non-sustainable initiatives.

There are certainly criticisms that can be made of these techniques and they should not be viewed as a panacea. What today’s public service managers do however need is some sort of indication as to what is potentially relevant to them and what can help them to implement new agendas such as Best Value at both the operational and strategic levels. A picture needs to be built up over time showing what can and does work. This is just the beginning of the picture but it is nonetheless a start. There remains much to be done and undoubtedly new techniques will emerge and those already known will be refined. It is all about developing, learning and sharing experience and expertise.

Two criteria of success that have emerged from the practical initiatives and field research to date are those of flexibility and involvement. The first of these relates to the use of techniques, which must not be regarded as set in stone. Although the statistical validity of Servqual is vital and must not be compromised, there is still room to alter the statements to suit the particular service environment to which it is being applied. The case example in which QFD was applied actually came up with innovative additions to the House of Quality that have not been previously documented but which appeared to be quite valid. There are a number of different types of benchmarking which may suit different services; it is a question of making a choice of the most suitable one at the time.

What is needed more often than not is commitment and the determination to make something happen. This leads on to the second issue of involvement. It is the public service providers themselves who can make the right things happen. They are the ones who understand best what is achievable. External expertise may be needed to provide guidance and useful partnerships can be established to achieve desired outcomes.










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About the authors:

Adrienne Curry has been a Lecturer at the University of Stirling for the last ten years and specialises in the fields of Quality Management and Information/Information Systems Management. Her main research interests are in Service Quality provision and measurement in the public sector and in information/communication management.

Alexandria Brysland is a part-time postgraduate student at the University of Stirling searching the use of Servqual, Quality Function Deployment and the European Business Excellence model in the public sector, using the Scottish local authority where she works as a potential case example of best practice.


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