Alan Cowling

Service quality in retail banking: the experience of two British clearing banks

Presents an empirical study of major quality improvement initiatives recently undertaken by two British banks. Provides a useful comparison of the two different approaches, and contributes new evidence on the current debate concerning the validity of the SERVQUAL model. First outlines the implementation of the SERVQUAL model, the bank’s subsequent quality improvement programme, and evidence of an improvement in customer satisfaction. Second, included for comparative purposes, describes the adoption and implementation of the Crosby total quality training programme. In both cases relevant evidence was gathered on staff attitudes. Given the long‐term nature of these comprehensive quality programmes, any evaluation must necessarily be tentative, but both banks are able to report an improvement in service quality, and fresh evidence is provided in support of the SERVQUAL model.

Banking on people

Total quality management (TQM) principles are now being applied in service industries in the UK, following their perceived success in manufacturing industries, with the particular aim of improving service quality. In financial services the impetus behind the adoption of quality programmes is increased competition and higher customer expectations. Studies of the introduction of quality programmes into service organizations in the UK are as yet few, but both these and the large number of studies of TQM in manufacturing point to the need for high levels of motivation and involvement by staff, and the significance of job satisfaction and of employment policies. Reports on an investigation into the introduction of TQM into two major banks in the UK, with a special focus on the reactions of employees. Highlights their success and limitations in two case studies, and draws out the lessons to be learned by senior management and human resources departments.

Developing a competency framework to support training in evidence‐based healthcare

This paper focuses on the practice of evidence‐based healthcare by doctors, nurses, midwives and the professions allied to medicine in four NHS Trusts in and around London. This qualitative study, based on interviews and self‐efficiency ratings uncovered the extent of evidence based practice between different groups and between acute and community Trusts, the perceived obstacles to the adoption and implementation of EBHC, and throws light on the knowledge, skills and attitudes required for such practice. Five clusters of competencies were identified – personal attributes, interpersonal, self‐management, information management and technical knowledge skills – and these form the basis of a competency framework of measurable criteria to assess proficiency as well as staff training needs which it is hoped will enable NHS Trusts to devise strategies to meet the requirements and challenges of clinical governance from April 1999.

Case study: service quality, business process re‐engineering and human resources: a case in point?

Features a case study of a major bank which aimed to achieve corporate transformation and a dramatic improvement in service quality. The links between service quality, customer satisfaction and corporate profitability in UK banking are outlined in order to set in context the many quality improvement initiatives undertaken by UK retail banks in recent years. Business process re‐engineering has proved to be the most popular of service quality initiatives but most have been limited to single processes rather than corporate transformation as portrayed in the case study. The five‐year corporate transformation programme focuses on employee communications, the redesign of work, recruitment and reward processes and the introduction of consumer research‐based national quality standards. The bank was rewarded for its efforts, coming top for three consecutive years in the Which? service quality surveys and, according to its own data, which contributed to a rise in customer satisfaction and customer retention at a time of declining employee satisfaction. Future developments in service quality segmentation and a working definition of service quality are proposed.

Junior doctors and management: myth and reality.

Uses an empirical investigation based on a survey of junior doctors in five NHS trust hospitals, to examine their attitudes towards both the general principle of clinical involvement in hospital management and the particular prospect of exercising such a role themselves. Finds that junior doctors, with few exceptions and irrespective of grade, were very positive towards clinical management roles in NHS trusts and were almost universally keen to assume management responsibilities when they were more senior. At the same time, finds junior doctors to have little concept of the doctor manager role or the recognized and demanded specific preparation for assuming management responsibilities.

Manpower Planning – Where Are We Today?

To what extent have personnel managers recaptured their enthusiasm for manpower planning, especially recruitment planning, in the light of projected demographic change in the 1990s? A survey conducted on behalf of the Institute of Personnel Management explores the issue. Its findings are presented and reviewed in the context of the general state of the art at the present time. Although in the private sector a number of major initiatives have been successfully launched in such areas as training and development and competitive restructuring, other areas of manpower planning find only limited support, and the public sector lags behind the rest of the field. There exist a few examples of comprehensive and systematic manpower planning.

Managing evidence‐based health care: a diagnostic framework

This paper proposes a diagnostic framework useful to Trust managers who are faced with the task of devising and implementing strategies for improvements in clinical effectiveness, and is based on a recent study incorporating clinicians, managers, and professional staff in four NHS Trusts in the North Thames Region. The gap framework is inspired by the gap model developed by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry from their research into service quality and incorporates Dave Sacketts schema as well as a personal competency profile needed for the practice of evidence based health-care (EBHC). The paper highlights the four organisational and personal failures (gaps) which contribute to the fifth gap, namely the discrepancy between clinically relevant research evidence and its implementation in health care. To close the gaps, Trusts need to set the goal and tackle the cultural, organisational, attitudinal and more material aspects such as investment in the information infrastructure, education and training of doctors. Doctors need to go through a process from awareness to action facilitated through a combination of personal and organisational incentives and rewards as well as training in the requisite skills. Researchers should take steps to improve the quality of the evidence and its accessibility and purchasers should reinforce the use of EBHC by withdrawing funding for care which has proved to be ineffective, inappropriate or inferior.

Management Education for Clinical Directors: An Evaluation

Based on a national evaluation of a £2 million Government‐sponsored programme to send some 260 consultants from the 14 Regional Health Authorities in England to attend Business School management programmes during 1992‐3. Reports on a 20‐month tracking study to assess changes in the level and breadth of knowledge, attitudes and behaviour as acknowledged by course participants, their UGMs, line managers and where possible their chief executives. Over 2,000 course participants were interviewed and some 106 completed both pre‐ and post‐course attendance “self‐efficacy” questionnaires. Most consultants emerged from the courses feeling more confident to handle their current and prospective management roles and the tangible returns to the organization suggest that advanced management development should continue for consultants being appointed to senior management roles such as clinical and medical directors.