Diverse businesses, such as garbage collection, retail banking, and management consulting are often tied together under the heading of “services”, based on little more than a perception that they are intangible and do not manufacture anything. Such definitions inadequately identify managerial and operational implications common among, and unique to, services. We present a “Unified Services Theory” (UST) to clearly delineate service processes from non-service processes and to identify key commonalities across seemingly disparate service businesses. The UST defines a service production process as one that relies on customer inputs; customers act as suppliers for all service processes. Non-services (such as make-to-stock manufacturing) rely on customer selection of outputs, payment for outputs, and occasional feedback, but production is not dependent upon inputs from individual customers. The UST reveals principles that are common to the wide range of services and provides a unifying foundation for various theories and models of service operations, such as the traditional “characteristics of services” and Customer Contact Theory. The UST has significant operational corollaries pertaining to capacity and demand management, service quality, services strategy, and so forth. The UST provides a common reference point to which services management researchers can anchor future theory-building and theory-testing research.

Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services Theory

D businesses, such as garbage collection, retail banking, and management consulting are often tied together under the heading of “services”, based on little more than a perception that they are intangible and do not manufacture anything. Such definitions inadequately identify managerial and operational implications common among, and unique to, services. We present a “Unified Services Theory” (UST) to clearly delineate service processes from non-service processes and to identify key commonalities across seemingly disparate service businesses. The UST defines a service production process as one that relies on customer inputs; customers act as suppliers for all service processes. Non-services (such as make-to-stock manufacturing) rely on customer selection of outputs, payment for outputs, and occasional feedback, but production is not dependent upon inputs from individual customers. The UST reveals principles that are common to the wide range of services and provides a unifying foundation for various theories and models of service operations, such as the traditional “characteristics of services” and Customer Contact Theory. The UST has significant operational corollaries pertaining to capacity and demand management, service quality, services strategy, and so forth. The UST provides a common reference point to which services management researchers can anchor future theory-building and theory-testing research.

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Foundations and implications of a proposed unified services theory

The economic landscape has changed for the industrialized nations of the world. The most mature nations on the planet have transitioned from agriculture and manufacturing economies to service-based economies. Services constitute more than 75% of industrialized nations' economies. These services are dependent on Information & Communication Technology that is supported by local and global information technology functions or the combination of both. In this paper, we review the modern methods and standards of information technology service management, such as ISO/IEC 20000; emerging pedagogical developments; and alternative approaches to ITSM research.

Information technology service management: an emerging area for academic research and pedagogical development

This study investigates the impact of banks characteristics, financial structure and macroeconomic indicators on banks Capital base in the Nigerian banking industry. The study does not account for ratio analysis in the computation of capital adequacy but rather it examines the determinant of Capital adequacy in Nigeria during the period 1980 – 2008 within an error correction framework. Co-integration technique revealed that economic indicators such as rate of inflation, real exchange rate, demand deposits, money supply, political instability, return on investment are most robust predictors of the determinants of capital adequacy in Nigeria. After the global credit crunch capital adequacy, being critical for banks, led the study to examine the relationship between bank capital base and macroeconomics variables. This implies that political stability may reduce financial distress and bankruptcy why Foreign investment will affect Banks capital in most developing economy in the period of financial crisis . However, the study also establishes that there is a negative relationship between inflation and banks capital base as inflation erode banks capital in most developing economy. This simply means that Nigerian government should regulate investment policy why banks regulators should strive to keep inflation rate at a minimum level, if possible below 5% for them to be more efficient so as to be globally competitive.

Determinants of capital adequacy in the Banking Sub-Sector of the Nigeria Economy: Efficacy of Camels. (A Model Specification with Co-Integration Analysis)

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/I/International%20Journal%20of%20Production%20Economics/Vol69.Issue1.2001/2210.pdf

Internal obstacles restraining productivity improvement in small Finnish industrial enterprises

This article presents a review of the book “Dictionary of Business and Economics,” by Christine Ammer and Dean S. Ammer.

Maurice P. Marchant

Papers

Dictionary of Business and Economics