Managing Professional Services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Managing Professional Services - Essay Example They emphasize the central role of customer expectations in this context and describe the need for managing them, i.e. setting them to appropriate levels.    Thakor and Kumar discuss their research into consumers' perception of what characterizes professional services. Consumers consider those services to be 'more professional' that are perceived to require higher levels of expertise and lower levels of manual labor, and that possess higher levels of credence qualities. Similarly, 'more professional' services are deemed more critical; recommendations play a more important role in service selection, and involve a higher lack of clarity as to the nature of service actually required. McLaughlin, Yang and van Dierdonck (1995) provide a detailed discussion of focus in professional service organizations. Drawing on empirical research of outpatient surgery centers, these authors define the notion of focus, discuss benefits and disadvantages, and develop a framework aiding managers in maki ng micro-focus decisions. Ojasalo (2001) investigates the specific nature of customer expectations in the context of professional services and describes them as often being fuzzy, implicit, and unrealistic. He describes the potential effect of such expectations and professional service providers' failure to meet them on perceived service quality. The author discusses the potential negative effects of appropriately managing such expectations on â€Å"perceived short-term quality/satisfaction and the related potential positive effects on long-term quality/satisfaction†.    Goldstein et al. (2002) describe the service concept's role in driving design and planning decisions at all levels of new service development. The service concept is described as essential to creating organizational alignment by linking a service organization's strategic intent to its customers' needs, and as linking the 'how' and 'what' of service design. Kwortnik and Thompson (2009) research the case of ' Liberty Cruise Lines' to understand the service operations challenges originating from service design decisions taken from a service marketing perspective. They advocate the use of the service operations model, which includes the service promise and concept as one of its essential elements. The authors emphasize the need for coordination between service marketing and operations during ongoing operations rather than only during new service development. Furthermore, they suggest bridging the service marketing-operations gap with service experience management, a new function integrating service operations and marketing. Malhotra and Sharma (2002) agree that the interface between service marketing and operations is critically important. They emphasize the importance of cross-functional interactions and joint decision-making across these disciplines, and introduce a simple marketing operations integration framework, which identifies opportunities for inter-functional integration. A cross -functional approach to service management is seen as essential for effective service design and delivery.    Heskett et al. (1994) describe the ser

Discuss the image of the post-war family in realtion to parethood, Essay

Discuss the image of the post-war family in realtion to parethood, suffering and Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders and Treichel's Der Verlorene - Essay Example The presentation of post-war society within the family domain in the two novels will be closely analysed in this essay, with regard to the family image, in order to ascertain what life was like and why family traits and painful emotions were present, as Weigel suggests above. Firstly, guilt and shame will be presented as a means of suffering within the family. Secondly, the effects of these emotions will provide a continuation into issues of parenthood and how ghosts from the past affect upbringing. Finally, Vergangenheitsbewà ¤ltigung will be examined in relation to language and generational gaps in order to determine how the past is dealt with in each novel in order to decipher how each author depicts the family image during this period and the traumatic effects this has had on offspring born after the war. Traumatic experience can be defined within the family setting through suffering. However, it is necessary to examine what it is to suffer and the consequences of it. This can be categorised by guilt, something that, according to Clarke, is â€Å"The feeling of having broken an internalised code of conduct or morality. To experience guilt is to feel pricked by conscience at this transgression, even if the individual is not called to accounts by others.†2 If suffering is symptomatic of guilt within the post-war image of the family, then let us now consider the meaning of shame. Undoubtedly, guilt is concerned with the inner-feelings of the individual while shame is how the individual believes himself to be considered by others. Lynd describes this notion as follows, This definition can be clarified further by alluding to Sartre, who points out that those who are guilty feel the force of a judgemental gaze by others, thus evoking emotions of shame with regard to their actions.4Therefore, the two emotions merge and emphasis is used accordingly, within the two novels, in order to nuance the