| Summary: | In the service sector literature, both marketers and organisational behaviourists emphasise the importance of the internal dynamics of the organisation in terms of a network of customers and suppliers interacting together to satisfy customers. Although the relevance of internal customers within the context of the service delivery process is frequently referred to in that literature, there is in fact, a somewhat surprising paucity of published research on the topic. The research project reported here was aimed, firstly at identifying and measuring those factors which determine how internal customers perceive the quality of the support they receive from other parts of the organisation. The second objective was to identify the organisational factors which enable support units to deliver the quality of service expected by internal customers. The research consisted of both qualitative and quantitative stages, the main part of the study involving British hospitals, one being located in the private sector. It included exploratory studies, design and development, pilot testing and empirical application of two separate instruments: an internal customers' questionnaire and an internal suppliers' questionnaire. It is felt that this piece of research has contributed to the existing work on organisational processes related to service quality. It has confirmed, that along with customers, employees are able and prepared to produce scaled assessments of the service they themselves receive from other parts of the organisation. Results have indicated that these can be captured as a limited number of perceptual dimensions. It has also contributed to the identification of organisational determinants of internal service quality. The results show that, from the different sets of variables which were felt to be facilitating or inhibiting factors in the delivery of support services to other units, that relating to the group level of analysis, appears to be the one primarily influencing the ability of support units to deliver internal customers·' expectations. ~ll in all, this work has contributed to a better understanding of the dynamics involved in the customer service delivery process using an internal service approach.
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