Proposed multi-dimensional approach to evaluating service recovery

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend thinking on service recovery processes and satisfaction with service recovery, using multi-dimensional consumer outcomes. The objective of the work was to propose that satisfaction with service recovery should be based on customers' expectations of the recovery encounter, which would be shaped by their expectations of “non-failed” encounters.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a theoretical approach. Using the existing service recovery literature as well as the traditional services literature, the conceptual framework and associated research propositions are developed.

Findings – The proposed framework suggests that service recovery is a service encounter it its own right. The effectiveness of recovery encounters will be based on how encounters operate relative to customer expectations and experiences with regard to the recovery activity.

Research limitations/implications – The research propositions and proposed framework need further empirical investigation.

Practical implications – The proposed framework suggests that managing service recovery should be undertaken in a similar fashion to managing any service, and thus managers need to understand customers' recovery expectations. Organisations also need to consider how a recovery action impacts on a range of customer outcomes, as focusing on one aspect will not capture consumers' full set of behaviours.

Originality/value – The proposed model identifies that service recovery should be evaluated with regard to consumers' recovery expectations and satisfaction is not based on expectations with regard to non-failed encounters.

Attitudes about work practices, time allocation and publication output: profiles of U.S. marketing academics

This study examines attitudes of U.S.-based Academy of Marketing Science members toward teaching, research, participation in administration (including service), and academic promotional issues. Individuals were grouped using Ward’s and K-means clustering procedures, which revealed four groups—established academics, research-focused academics, less satisfied midcareer academics, and satisfied teachers. Clusters were further profiled according to the amount of time spent on teaching, research, and administration; research output; and individual demographic and institutional characteristics. Overall, clusters were generally dissatisfied with a range of work-related issues, with workload stress appearing as an issue that needs to be addressed within marketing academia.

Shared learning : a collaborative approach for supporting pre-service teacher's reflective practice

Independent learning and critical thought are developed when students are encouraged to express and review their own understandings and the ideas of others as part of their learning journey. This paper focuses on an innovation to engage and support pre-service teachers (students) in a collaborative approach to learning following a teaching practicum. Through the creation of a learning community, information and practice is shared and further challenged in a supportive environment. The opportunity for students to review their own work in relation to responses of peers enables them to become involved in the process of critiquing their own beliefs and practices as well as their peers, within a set framework. Favourable outcomes for both students and university staff augur well for the future development of the process.  

Social work and spirituality in a secular society

• Summary: In an increasingly secular era which finds only a small minority of the population regularly participating in organized religion, there is emerging interest in how spirituality can be incorporated into social work practice. This article proposes one way in which this might occur in `deliberately secular' nations such as Australia.

• Findings: A framework in which spirituality is considered to be an aspect of lived experience is proposed. Dimensions of life which can be incorporated into such a framework include life rituals, creativity, social action, and sense of place.

• Applications : Conceptualizing spirituality in a way which does not use specifically religious language or concepts, may enable discussion of spiritual issues to be incorporated into social work practice when either practitioners or service users have or no religious background or affiliation or no shared religious background.

Housing service officers : agents of the state or customer service officers?

Staff employed in the Victorian Office of Housing are invariably required to exercise discretion in their day-to-day work managing housing assets and providing services to public housing tenants. Policies specify processes but they never cover all situations and do not provide guidance on competing objectives. For example, preparing a property for reletting is a process with protocols and budget constraints. However, staff can make procedural variations that compy with policy. These variations, generally learnt from peers on the job, often result in budget over runs, but do result in improved properties for new tenants. Discretion is being exercised in balancing housing asset, budget control and tenant service objectives. A housing officer sums up the enduring tension in balancing objectives in the question and statement:’ Am I an agent of the state or a customer service officer? Because I can’t be both’. Organisationally these tensions are spoken about as ‘management issues’, ‘policy reengineering’ and ‘unrealistic understandings’. Using data from an ethnographic study in the Victorian Office of Housing, the paper addresses the question: ‘What do we know about the way in which front line housing officers manage competing objectives in their daily work and how might this knowledge be usefully used in the development of operational policy?’ The paper will explore the way in which complex administrative rules are used as a device to align staff to the Office of Housing objectives and limit the exercise of discretion by frontline staff. Against the background of this analysis the paper will consider the limitations of rule making and the extent to which other organisational strategies might be important for improvements in service provision in a context of constrained resources and limited resources.

Defendants' liability for pure mental harm to third parties in Australia : still a work in progress

In Australia, both common and statutory law allows compensation for negligently occasioned recognised psychiatric injury, but distinguishes between pure mental harm and consequential mental harm. This column briefly discusses the concept of pure "mental harm" and the major Australian cases relating to defendants' liability to third parties for causing them pure mental harm (Jaensch v Coffey (1984) 155 CLR 549 [PDF]; Tame v New South Wales; Annetts v Australian Stations Pty Ltd (2002) 211 CLR 317 [PDF]; Sullivan v Moody (2001) 207 CLR 562 [PDF]; and Gifford v Strang Patrick Stevedoring Pty Ltd (2003) 214 CLR 269 [PDF]). The analysis focuses on judicial approaches to determining liability in these cases, especially causation. Lack of guiding principles and precise tests for attribution of liability are illustrated by Kemp v Lyell McEwin Health Service (2006) 96 SASR 192 [PDF]. This case is analysed first in the context of common law, and then in the light of the reform legislation contained in the Civil Liability Act 1936 (SA) and similar provisions in other jurisdictions.

Nursing work and nursing knowledge : exploring the work of women's health nurses, patterns of power and praxis

The majority of women's health nurses in this study work in generalist community health centres. They have developed their praxis within the philosophy and policies of the broader women's health movement and primary health care principles in Australia. The fundamental assumption underlying this study is that women's health nurses possess a unique body of knowledge and clinical wisdom that has not been previously documented and explored. The epistemological base from which these nurses' operate offers important insights into the substantive issues that create and continually shape the practice world of nurses and their clients. Whether this represents a (re)construction of the dominant forms of health care service delivery for women is examined in this study. The study specifically aims at exploring the practice issues and experience of women's health service provision by women's health nurses in the context of the provision of cervical cancer screening services. In mapping this particular group of nurses practice, it sets out to examine the professional and theoretical issues in contemporary nursing and women's health care. In critically analysing the powerful discourses that shape and reshape nursing work, the study raises the concern that previous analyses of pursing work tend to universalise the structural and social subordination of nurses and nursing knowledge. This universalism is most often based on examples of midwifery and nursing work in hospital settings, and subsequently, because of these conceptualisations, all of nursing is too often deemed as a dependent occupation, with little agency, and is analysed as always in relation to medicine, to hospitals, to other knowledge forms. Denoting certain discourses as dominant proposes a relationship of power and knowledge and the thesis argues that all work relations and practices in health are structured by certain power/knowledge relations. This analysis reveals that there IX are many competing and complimentary power/knowledge relations that structure nursing, but that nursing, and in particular women's health nurses, also challenge the power/knowledge relations around them. Through examining theories of power and knowledge the analysis, argues that theoretical eclecticism is necessary to address the complex and varied nature of nursing work. In particular it identifies that postmodern and radical feminist theorising provide the most appropriate framework to further analyse and interpret the work of women's health nurses. Fundamental to the position argued in this thesis is a feminist perspective. This position creates important theoretical and methodological links throughout the whole study. Feminist methodology was employed to guide the design, the collection and the analysis. Intrinsic to this process was the use of the 'voices' of women's health nurses as the basis for theorising. The 'voices' of these nurses are highlighted in the chapters as italicised bold script. A constant companion along the way in examining women's health nurses' work, was the reflexivity with feminist research processes, the theoretical discussions and their 'voices'. Capturing and analysing descriptive accounts of nursing praxis is seen in this thesis as providing a way to theorise about nursing work. This methodology is able to demonstrate the knowledge forms embedded in clinical nursing praxis. Three conceptual threads emerge throughout the discussions: one focuses on nursing praxis as a distinct process, with its own distinct epistemological base rather than in relation to 'other' knowledge forms; another describes the medical restriction and opposition as experienced by this group of nurses, but also of their resistance to medical opposition. The third theme apparent from the interviews, and which was conceptualised as beyond resistance, was the description of the alternative discourses evident in nursing work, and this focused on notions of being a professional and on autonomous nursing praxis. This study concludes that rather than accepting the totalising discourses about nursing there are examples within nursing of resistance—both ideologically and X in practice—to these dominant discourses. Women's health nurses represent an important model of women's health service delivery, an analysis of which can contribute to critically reflecting on the 'paradigm of oppression' cited in nursing and about nursing more generally. Reflecting on women's health service delivery also has relevance in today's policy environment, where structural shifts in Commonwealth/State funding arrangements in community based care, may undermine women's health programs. In summary this study identifies three important propositions for nursing: • nursing praxis can reconstruct traditional models of health care; • nursing praxis is powerful and able to 'resist' dominant discourses; and • nursing praxis can be transformative. Joining feminist perspectives and alternative analyses of power provides a pluralistic and emancipatory politics for viewing, describing and analysing 'other' nursing work. At the micro sites of power and knowledge relations—in the everyday practice worlds of nurses, of negotiation and renegotiation, of work on the margins and at the centre—women's health nurses' praxis operates as a positive, productive and reconstructive force in health care.

As fire burns : functional work and praxis in ontology

The context: the historical and philosophical demise of the Marxist model of praxis as a unity of theory and practice organized by a Party in service of a Cause. The task: to remodel praxis by distinguishing it from functional work. The proving ground: the discourse of ontology. The thesis works through four types of ontology in its attempt to construct different ontological schemas for praxis and functional work. In the first three ontologies, Platonic, Aristotelian and relativist, ontological impasses occur in the accounts of the relation between one and the multiple, and of the existence of order. They prevent the successful construction of a schema for functional work. It is in the set-theory ontology of Alain Badiou that the means arise for the passage through these impasses and the definitive construction of distinct ontological schemas for functional work and praxis. This results in a new concept of praxis and a multiplication of its domains beyond politics to science, art and love

Diabetes service provision : a qualitative study of the experiences and views of Pakistani and Indian patients with Type 2 diabetes

Aims To explore Pakistani and Indian patients' experiences of, and views about, diabetes services in order to inform the development of culturally sensitive services.

Design Qualitative, interview study involving 23 Pakistani and nine Indian patients with Type 2 diabetes recruited from general practices and the local community in Edinburgh, Scotland. Data collection and analysis occurred concurrently and recruitment continued until no new themes emerged from the interviews.

Results Respondents expressed gratitude for the availability of free diabetes services in Britain, as they were used to having to pay to access health care on the Indian subcontinent. Most looked to services for the prompt detection and treatment of complications, rather than the provision of advice about managing their condition. As respondents attached importance to receiving physical examinations, they could be disappointed when these were not offered by health-care professionals. They disliked relying on interpreters and identified a need for bilingual professionals with whom they could discuss their diabetes care directly.

Conclusions Gratitude for free services in Britain may instil a sense of indebtedness which makes it difficult for Pakistanis and Indians to be critical of their diabetes care. Health-care professionals may need to describe their roles carefully, and explain how different diabetes services fit together, to avoid Pakistani and Indian patients perceiving treatment as unsatisfactory. Whilst linkworker schemes may meet patients' need to receive culturally sensitive information in their first language, work is needed to assess their effectiveness and sustainability.

Public and private psychiatry : can they work together and is it worth the effort?

OBJECTIVE: Partnerships in mental health care, particularly between public and private psychiatric services, are being increasingly recognized as important for optimizing patient management and the efficient organization of services. However, public sector mental health services and private psychiatrists do not always work well together and there seem to be a number of barriers to effective collaboration. This study set out to investigate the extent of collaborative 'shared care' arrangements between a public mental health service and private psychiatrists practising nearby. It also examined possible barriers to collaboration and some possible solutions to the identified problems.

METHOD: A questionnaire examining the above factors was sent to all public sector mental health clinicians and all private psychiatrists in the area.

RESULTS: One hundred and five of the 154 (68.2%) public sector clinicians and 103 of the 194 (53.1%) private psychiatrists returned surveys. The main barriers to successful collaboration identified by members of both sectors were: 'Difficulty communicating' endorsed by 71.4% of public clinicians and 72% of private psychiatrists, 'Confusion of roles and responsibilities' endorsed by 62.9% and 66%, respectively, and 'Different treatment approach' by 47.6% and 45.6%, respectively. Over 60% of private psychiatrists identified problems with access to the public system as a barrier to successful shared care arrangements. It also emerged, as hypothesized, that the public and private systems tend to manage different patient populations and that public clinicians in particular are not fully aware of the private psychiatrists' range of expertise. This would result in fewer referrals for shared care across the sectors.

CONCLUSIONS: A number of barriers to public sector clinicians and private psychiatrists collaborating in shared care arrangements were identified. The two groups surveyed identified similar barriers. Some of these can potentially be addressed by changes to service systems. Others require cultural shifts in both sectors. Improved communications including more opportunities for formal and informal meetings between people working in the two sectors would be likely to improve the understanding of the complementary sector's perspective and practice. Further changes would be expected to require careful work between the sectors on training, employment and practice protocols and initiatives, to allow better use of the existing services and resources.

Groin injecting in injectable opioid treatment service users in South London

Femoral (or groin) injecting is an emerging public health challenge to all drug-related services within the UK. Recent work in the area has proposed that groin injecting in the UK has moved from being a ‘risk boundary’ to an ‘acceptable behaviour’. This article uses data from 10 in-depth qualitative interviews with service users from a supervised injectable opiate treatment service in South London to report on pathways to, and reasons for, groin injecting. Our findings indicate that even though groin injecting constitutes a risk boundary for some injectors, the practice is no longer heavily stigmatised and is perceived by some to be an acceptable risk. Narratives also pointed to the importance of peers in the initiation of groin injecting. Interviewees described the groin as a site of ‘last resort’ in contrast to ‘convenience’ groin injectors described in some previous research. We conclude that it might be helpful to distinguish between convenience and last resort groin injectors and support the call for innovative interventions which aim to reduce modelling of groin injection and which promote social norms supportive of using peripheral injecting sites.

Problematic placement : pathways pre-service teachers’ perspectives on their infant/toddler placement

The inclusion of an infant/toddler placement in a ‘pathways’ early childhood teaching degree, where students already have qualifications and experience in working with young children, can be problematic. This pilot study investigated student teachers’ views on their infant/toddler (birth-to-two-years) placement. Sixty-six students completing their early childhood education degree at an Australian university responded to a survey seeking their perspectives on the effectiveness of the placement in developing teacher confidence, knowledge and skills, and the quality of the supervision they received. The participants had entered their degree with a two-year Diploma of Children’s Services. Responses indicated significant dissatisfaction with the quality of supervision, the absence of teacher-mentors, and the lack of opportunities to practise new approaches. Participants commented that they ‘already knew’ how to work with this age group, and that they aspired to work with older children. The results align with other findings on factors associated with positive placements, and raise questions about the effectiveness of the infant/toddler placement in its current form.