Customer and employee perceptual congruence in service co-production

Abstract

Building on perceptual congruence research, this paper argues that when a customer and a front-line employee have similar perceptions of a co-produced output, employee awareness can support quality improvement efforts in service operations. The authors develop an analytical model describing perceptual congruence in a dyadic customer-employee relationship using a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function. This model allows the authors to describe a service context with three factors: 1) customer work-allocation level (that is, percent of work expected to be done by the customer); 2) customer-employee interaction level (that is, level of communication needed); and 3) customer-employee interaction type (that is, superiority or inferiority perceived by the customer and the employee in the interaction). The authors also calculate which type of customer-employee perceptual bias alignment is needed to achieve perceptual congruence under these three contextual factors. Their model may guide service managers how to manage perceptual biases -- considering their service design characteristics to achieve perceptual congruence.

KEY WORDS:

• co-production
• constant elasticity of substitution
• perceptual congruence
• perceptual bias
• service quality

About the authors

Ahmet Semih Ozkul is an associate professor in the Department of Economics and Business Analytics at the University of New Haven, Connecticut. He holds a doctorate in supply chain and operations management from Clemson University. Ozkul teaches courses in operations, information systems, and business analytics. His current research interests include coordinated production planning in the supply chain and improving service quality. His work has been published in operations, information systems, and educational technology journals. He can be reached at [email protected].

Uzay Damali is an assistant professor of operations and supply chain management at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse. He is the director of the Healthcare Analytics Management Program, and teaches courses in operations management and healthcare analytics management. He holds a doctorate in supply chain and operations management from Clemson University, and published in Journal of Operations Management and Decision Sciences. His current research interests include improving service co-production and healthcare quality. He can be reached at [email protected].

Anup Menon Nandialath is an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse. He holds a doctorate in strategic management from the Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University. Nandialath has published in such journals as Journal of Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, European Management Review, Journal of Transportation Law, Logistics, & Policy and the International Journal of Emerging Markets, among others. His current research interests include cognitive biases and its implications for competitive and operations strategy and the implications of executive compensation on operational excellence. He can be reached at [email protected].

Andrew Stapleton is professor of operations and supply chain management at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse. He holds a doctorate in transportation and logistics, and an MBA in supply chain management from New Mexico State University. Stapleton has published more than 45 papers in such journals as Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Transportation Journal, Journal of Transportation Law, Logistics, & Policy, Journal of Transportation Management; Business Horizons; Business Process Management Journal; and The International Journal of Logistics Management. Stapleton served as a senior global distribution manager at General Motors Corp. His current research interests include legal issues in transportation and supply chain management, inventory and CEO compensation, blockchain applications in supply chain management and Operations Excellence (OPEX). He can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1 Note that our literature review shows that services can alter the rater bias of how one thinks about the other through training. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no discussion of how services can alter the bias of how one thinks of himself (self-rater bias), which is considered an important issue causing certain discrepancies and inefficiencies discussed extensively in the human resources literature (Yammarino and Atwater 1993).