A Study on the Factors of Internal Service Quality--Nurse for example

• Main Authors: Yu-Hui Cheng, 鄭玉惠
• Other Authors: Iuan-Yuan Lu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/19369204871569167815

博士 === 國立中山大學 === 企業管理學系研究所 === 89 === The competition between product and service procedure is more and more alike. Because it is difficult to distinguish the differences between hospitals on both tangible product and service procedure, the most important is service of employee. The service of employee is a competitive advantage and is hard to copy. Azzohlini (1993) mentioned the function quality and response of internal employee were important resources that revealed the discrepancy between each enterprise and the competitive advantage of it. Heskett, et al. (1994) mentioned that the model was related to the concept of service-profit chain. They thought the internal service quality to employees would strengthen the satisfaction, royalty and productivity of employees, then creating high service value. High service value brought out high external customer satisfaction and royalty. That is why the internal service quality is so important to organizational profit and revenue growth. And most of the researchers agree that only satisfied employees can create satisfied customers. In Taiwan, the government has advanced the system of medical insurance, so the need of medical treatment is expanding. The service of hospital includes facility and employee. When the patient enter the hospital for their disease, many employees have to take care of them. The employees are doctors, pharmacists, nurses, administrative staff, and so on. The greater part of employees is nurses. They are the front line to contact with and care for patient. The service of nurse is very important and is hard to copy. Researchers have found many factors of external service quality and developed measuring methods for service quality from the perspective of customers ( Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1985; George & Gronroos, 1989； Heskett, 1990). In the meantime, the measurement of internal service quality was hardly mentioned. Yes, some researcher paid attention to this topic. They discussed the significance of internal service quality from other researches or their own observation. But we need more information about it. So this research tries to find the factors of internal service quality and explores the relationship between the internal service quality, the job satisfaction, the service ability and external service quality. After interviewing nurses, we integrated the data of the interviews and the exploration of other research papers to develop the questionnaire. The questionnaire had been filled out by the nurses who work in large-scale hospital. We induce the following results: (1) The factors of internal service quality are as follows: the style of management, the contact with other department, the training, the support of nursing department, the reward, the correct and definite responsibility, the resources, the content of job and the target of hospital. (2) The service ability include the professional knowledge, techniques and attitude. (3) The factors of external service quality about employee include the content of service and the efficiency of service. (4) Because of different personal characteristic, nurses have different recognition to factors of internal service quality except the training and the support of nursing department. (5) The different personal characteristic may brings out different recognition of service ability, job satisfaction. (6) The different personal characteristic may brings out different recognition of factors of external service quality about employee. (7) The correlation between factors of internal service quality, service ability and job satisfaction is positive except the training and the content of job. (8) The regression models that include internal service quality-service ability model, internal service quality-job satisfaction model, internal service quality-content of service model and internal service quality- efficiency of service model are significant. (9) For full model, the structure of model is fit except the direct relationship between internal service quality and external service quality about employee. We think the relationship is transmitted by job satisfaction and service ability.