A systemic design for mass customized service delivery in higher education institutions

Significance of the study Firstly, the study introduced universities to an innovative model choice of systems thinking to implement service operations and delivery effectively & efficie

1.1 Research background

The World Declaration on Higher Education highlights the need to develop student services worldwide It is imperative that higher education institutions (HEIs) provide services and programs that promote the quality of student life, to meet its needs and to improve learning and success achievements (Ludeman, 2002) The declaration is considered as the vision for student service operationalization The major functions of student services and administrations in any universities include admission, academic registry, fees and finance affairs, international affairs, central examinations, graduations, timetabling, customer services for students, and student information system Most of HEIs have identified the mission

to provide the highest quality service to students due to student centricity approach To implement this mission in reality however is a challenge for universities where there is an increasing heterogeneity in student demands while the paradox of efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery is always a dilema In addition in the context of muticultural academic diversity, stimulated by globalization, there is a continual growth and diversification (Audin et al., 2003) in students’ demand especially in the context of strong competitions among universities

Several universities are looking for innovative ways to gain competitive advantage over their rivals, as well as to create value for

students in terms of student experience and through administrative efficiency (Dunnion and O’Donovan, 2014) Derived from viewing students as customers with continual diversification, there is a need for service staff at universities to provide mass-customised services (MCS) and this cannot be achieved unless there is a departure from a mass-production approach (Pine, 1993)

The mass-production approach is based on standardising work procedures in which university staff members need to handle students’ demands in a repetitive manner, with detailed descriptions of service procedures, dialogue scripts, and after-contact work standards (Jaaron and Backhouse, 2013) This standardisation of procedures, however, is perceived to increase the mechanisation of the student-employee contact and harm students’ satisfaction with HEIs (Dunnion and O’Donovan, 2014) Therefore, the transfer from product-oriented economies to service-oriented ones, as witnessed in the most developed countries, has fuelled attempts in the HEIs to migrate from mass production models to Mass Customisation (MC) ones (Tien, 2011)

When moving to an MC approach, one of the major challenges to confront HEIs is their ability to develop an MC service strategy, which is dependent on the choice of a proper service operations design (Da Silveira et al., 2001; Moon et al., 2011) In addition, when considering

how to design services from which customers can ‘pull value’– i.e get what they want – Seddon (2008) believes that it is critical to shift from thinking of the system as one that pulls physical things together to manufacture at the rate of customer demand to thinking of the system as one that offers services together in response to the variety of customer demands, called ‘systems-thinking’ Developed since 2003 by Seddon, the terminology of ‘systems-thinking’ used throughout this paper to describe the service delivery system has emerged from the translation to the service sector of lean manufacturing principles (Seddon and Brand, 2008), incorporating Deming’s intervention theory (1982) together with Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (1981)

According to Jaaron and Backhouse (2013), the employment of the systems-thinking approach for service operations design has a significant impact on the service-offering organisations in terms of providing a real-time mass-customised service Although MC of student services is essential and beneficial to universities as a sharp weapon in the competition, as analysed above, little attention has been paid by previous empirical studies to models and tools that can operationalise MC in universities

Therefore, there is a need to conduct this research: “A SYSTEMIC DESIGN FOR MASS CUSTOMIZED SERVICE DELIVERY IN

HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS” to investigate the impact of applying the systems-thinking approach on universities’ abilities to provide mass-customised services for their students

1.2 Significance of the study

Firstly, the study introduced universities to an innovative model choice of systems thinking to implement service operations and delivery effectively & efficiently, which could seamlessly response to the continuous changes and diversification in student/ customer needs

Secondly, due to proper model choice of service delivery design it could create value for students in terms of student experience and administrative efficiency and consequently contribute to enhance universities’ competitive advantage over their rivals

Further, the most striking significance is to make success for both the students and the institution

+ For Institutions: if an institution follows the systems-thinking principles to deliver mass-customized services for students’ continuously-changed demands, it tends to become a learning organization, which could gain unique competitive edge As a result, the enrollment rate of both domestic and international students would increase, the service staff capability would be enhanced, and the

+ For Top Management Team and operations manager: it helps Top Management Team and operations managers realize the benefits of transfering from the top-down hierarchy perspective of Command and control thinking to outside-in system one of systems-thinking, which makes a great innovation in operations management of service departments/ institutions

+ For students: if students’ service demand could be met at the first contact, the value creation would be optimized and get student satisfaction As a result, it would contribute to the quality of students learning experience and their academic success

Overall, there are several managerial implications for universities adopting the model of systems-thinking to implement their strategies of

MC in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage It helps university administrators accordingly to know what to do and where to start in their endeavor to design an MC service-delivery system based on systems-thinking

Definition of the key terms

Student services are services related to student affairs which are

delivered to meet demands of diverse student population as individuals and as subgroups (Ludeman, 2002) such as admission, academic registry,

finance affairs, international affairs, customer services, testing, graduation, etc

Mass customization (MC) is the process of providing a one-of-a-kind product without sacrificing the benefits of scale economies (Davis, 1987)

Mass customized services (MCS) is the use of flexible processes

and organizational structures to produce varied and often individually customized products and services at the low-cost of a standardized, mass-production product (Hart, 1994; Pine, 1993)

Systems-thinking principles (STP) is defined as redesigning

service operations around and from customer demand instead of functional hierarchies (Seddon, 2003& 2008)

Higher education institutions (HEIs) designates organizations

providing higher, postsecondary, tertiary, and/or third-level education

1.3 Contributions to the field

To best of my knowledge, this research firstly contributes to the fulfillment of the gap of MC in service operations (Da Silveira et al, 2001)

The value of this research secondly is the development of Systems theory applications in service operations through the design for mass

organizations

Another major contribution of this study is to be able to respond to the need of academic discussion of systems thinking approach due to its significant impact on practice (Jackson, 2009)

Further, one of the most significant contribution of this research is to create a measurement scale of the relationship between Systems-thinking design and mass – customised service capabilty of a higher education institution for student service operations, shortly termed as ST-MCS

Last but not least, this research provided academic researchers with empirical evidences from Europe and Asia to support the operational model of MCS using systems- thinking approach

1.4 Research questions and research gaps

O’Donovan (2010) argued that the prevailing ‘command and control’ (Seddon 2003) management logic, which can be found at work throughout both the public and private sectors, is the primary cause of inferior and expensive service Based on their findings, they suggested an alternative way using Principles of Systems-thinking (Jackson et al 2008), whilst comparing and contrasting this with the flawed thinking which currently prevails In addition, Jaaron and Backhouse (2013) showed that the systems-thinking principles for service operations design have a great

real-time MCS Although the importance of MCS is significant as analyzed above, few studies were previously conducted and there still need more empirical studies to prove the possibility of operationalizing MCS at HEIs following systems-thinking design Therefore, the first research questions was formed as follows:

1 How does the systems-thinking principles impact on universities’ abilities to provide MCS for their students in the UK?

Although a few studies in the UK indicated that the systems-thinking approach has significantly enhanced the universities’ ability to design MCS, which are more able to absorb diversified student demand, this exposes a gap that we need to use different HEIs in different cultures and sittings to ensure that these constructs do not confound results Hence, it

is really meaningful if we could find a case from Asia to validate correlates of systems-thinking principles and MCS for students As a consequence, the following basic research question has been still unanswered

2 How are the correlates of systems thinking principles and mass customized service delivery for students at Asian universities?

1.5 Objectives of the study and motivation

This study was conducted to investigate the impact of systems-thinking principles (Seddon, 2003) on operationalizing the ‘mass customization’ capability of student services at HEIs in both Europe and Asia

This study was divided into the two following stages:

Stage 1: based on a case study conducted in one of the UK’s leading universities in the east midlands region of England, Stage 1 of this research empirically explored the determinants of mass customization as

a result of systems-thinking in service delivery in the HEIs A conceptual framework must be created for universities to follow in this regard The conceptual framework would help university administrators, accordingly,

to know what to do and where to start in their endeavour to design an MC service-delivery system based on systems-thinking

Stage 2: based on the conceptual model designed for MC in higher education from Stage 1, Stage 2 of this research aimed to validate the correlates of systems thinking principles and mass customized service delivery for students at Asian universities, particularly in two dynamic universities in Taiwan

1.6 Theoretical Framework

Anchored on the present literature about mass customization and systems-thinking principles, a conceptual framework was proposed to illustrate the different levels of the principles of systems-thinking impacting MCS capability including human resource level (i.e micro determinants), operational level (i.e meso determinants), and functional level (i.e macro determinants) The relationships between these three

organisational levels were represented in Figure 1.1 as a the theoretical framework

Figure 1.1 Theoretical Framework

MCS capability

System design at Macro level

(Functional Dimension)

System design at Micro level

(Human Resource Dimension)

System design at Meso level

(Operational Dimension)

Systems-thinking Principles

1.7 Research approach

A mixed research design (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998) with

quantitative and qualitative data sources as shown in Figure 1.2 was

relevant for achieving the objective of this research

In the first stage, a qualitative case study was conducted in one of the UK’s leading universities to empirically explore the systems-thinking relationship with enhancing the MC ability of admission and academic registry services in the HEIs through the realisation of the determinants of

MC of students’ service operationalization in a systemic design

In the second stage, a quantitative methodology was employed in two

of the most dynamic universities in Taiwan to validate the correlates of systems-thinking principles and mass customization capability of students’ service delivery through testing the constructed model from Stage 1

Finally, to mitigate the impacts of "Omitted Variable Bias" (OVB), a number of in-depth interviews with operations managers and service staffs, as sources of another qualitative study, were conducted in order to reconfirm the correlates of Systems-thinking and MCS capability

Figure 1.2 Research Flow

 Literature Review

 Case study

 Semi-structured interviews

 Focus group

 Observation and archival document

Explore the relationship between Systems thinking

and MCS capability and the preliminary influential

 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to

describe variability among the observed,

correlated variables

 Structural equation modeling (SEM) for

hypotheses testing

Determine the key determinants of MCS

operationalization in HEIs as a result of

systems-thinking principles in Taiwanese HEIs

Qualitative research

Qualitative research

In- depth interviews to mitigate the impacts of

Omitted Variable Bias (OVB)

Quantitive research

Confirm the correlates of Systems-thinking and

MCS capability

1.8 Delimitations of the study

There are some boundaries in this dissertation which had been set before any investigation was carried out First, for the purpose of the first stage of this research, only one leading UK’s university, which had already adopted a systems-thinking approach to manage their service operations, design, and delivery was targeted as indicated in the methodological section Therefore, other universities were not included in this research due to the fact that they could not fulfill the mechanisms of the data collection strategy and research goals

For the second stage of this study in order to validate the correlates of the determinants of MCS in HEIs in Taiwan, the focus was made on the service institutions and departments services in the two Taiwanese university, which experienced in systems-thinking design for mass customized service (MSC) delivery through providing students with some kind of "One - Stop Service" or "One-door Service Therefore, other service institutions/ departments were not included in this research due to the fact that they could not satisfy the requirements of the data collection and research objectives

As far as the methodological procedures such as data collection was concerned, the emphasis in the second stage was on quantitative-based

questionairres administration modes such as face-to-face adminnistration, paper-and-pencil administration as well as online format link were mainly used in this research

In addtion, in order to investigate the relationship between systems-thinking principles and university’s capability of MCS operations emphasis was put on chief operating officer, academic registrars, service staff and officers of functional departments of the aforementioned university Thus, other stakeholders of university such as faculties and students were excluded from both stages of this research

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

The sections below present a selective review of the literature that hightlights the following points:

Firstly, a brief introduction of Seddon’s Systems-thinking and its origin (2003) were presented Secondly, a shift from Mass customization (MC) in manufacturing to Mass customized services (MCS) was presented, analysed and summarized Thirdly, the most successful example of applying Systems thinking theory in business was taken and illustrated in the relation with MC model Finally, the second chapter of the dissertation closed with summary of research gaps which paved for this study

2.1 Seddon’s Systems thinking (2003) and its origin

Systems-thinking began life by defining itself in opposition to operational research (OR), known as soft systems-thinking vs hard systems approach (Checkland, 1978; Ackoff, 1979) Systems-thinking is normally viewed favourably as offering strengths complementary to traditional strands of the disciplines, and is strongly anchored on the theories provided by Checkland (1981) and Eden and Ackermann (2001)

Following over 50 years of establishment and development, there are currently two systems approaches arising that have been little discussed

in the academic world but are having a considerable impact on practice (Jackson, 2009), which are ‘Whole Systems Working’ by Hudson (2006) and Vanguard’s systems-thinking in the service industry by Seddon (2003)

‘Whole Systems Working’ has influenced the field of health and social care because it is described as ‘the process of involving all stakeholders of the domain in discussion about service change … rather than focusing only upon their own service’ (Hudson, 2006)

Since being first developed by Professor John Seddon and his colleagues in the mid-1980s, Systems thinking (ST) has evolved as a way

to study and redesign the work of service operations Seddon’s published works (2003, 2008) described the ST in details, and there are already numerous documented examples of its application to organisations (ODPM, 2005; Middleton, 2010; Zokaei et al., 2011) It had many features in common with other forms of ST as developed by thinkers such

as Checkland, Ackoff, Senge and Jackson (ODPM, 2005), which were listed below

• ST situates itself in contrast to reductionism (what Seddon terms

‘command and control’) (Chapman, 2004)

• the parts of the system are recognised to be interdependent with emergent properties (Checkland, 1978; Flood, 2002)

• ST is best learnt experientially (Ison, 2010)

• ST involves the idea of people being exposed to their own

‘worldview’ (Churchman, 1968) and recognising that this contrasts with the experience of their service from a customer’s perspective

• feedback loops are demonstrated to be crucial to refining a system’s performance (Senge, 2006)

• services need to structure themselves to be able to deal with the

‘requisite variety’ of their operating environments (Ashby, 1991)

However, Seddon’s version of ST is unusual because of the particular

attention given to the ideas of Deming (1982) and Ohno (1988) who are not customarily considered to be part of the systems thinking literature (ODPM, 2005; Seddon and Caulkin, 2007)

Seddon’s systems-thinking combines aspects of systems-thinking, lean-thinking, and intervention theory to deliver what it claims is a method for achieving the ideals that many managers aspire to: a learning, improving, innovative, adaptive, and energised organisation This approach has been influential in the public sector, including HEIs, in terms of improving efficiency and effectiveness (Jackson et al., 2008) Therefore, the term ‘systems-thinking’ used in this paper follows Seddon’s (2003) systems-thinking approach, which was successfully applied in the UK public and third sectors

Systems-thinking principles are based on redesigning service operations around customer demand versus functional hierarchies

(Seddon, 2008), as presented in Table 2.1 Systems-thinking principles

were trying to provide the means to develop a customer-driven adaptive organization (Seddon, 2003)

Systems-thinking was defined by opposition to ‘command and control’ traditional management (Seddon, 2003) in terms of the seven comparative dimensions including perspective, design of work, decision

management, ethos, change and motivation These principles for MCS were trying to overcome the efficiency paradox of service delivery (Pham

& Jaaron, 2018) while still promoting the capacity of absorbing demand variety (Jackson et al., 2008)

Table 2.1 Principles of systems-thinking

specialization

Demand, value and flow

standards: related to budget

Capability, variation: related to purpose

budgets

Act on the system

Source: Seddon & Brand (2008)

One central pillar of systems-thinking is that the systems can absorb demand variety (Jackson et al., 2008), or in other words, systems-thinking has more capacity to respond to various customer demands (Jaaron and Backhouse, 2011) Differing from the contractual attitude to customers of

the conventional approach, ‘what matters’ to customers most at their first time of raising demands is the priority-mission in the systems-thinking approach This shows a high potential for MC in HEIs with the increasing heterogeneity in student demand

Instead of top-down functional hierarchies in a command and control system, systems-thinking views service organisations as a holistic coordination of the individual constituents of the system, including their inter-linkages and the relationships with the wider system (O’Donovan, 2014) Therefore, when a decision in an organisation is made, it is integrated with work, not separated from work, because the systems designed emanates from demand value-flow versus functional specialisation

For service departments in a university, actions with the system or as

a part of a team without concrete boundaries allow a more powerful service process because all data maintains a smooth value flow between service staff; this provides resilience and creativity in responding to demand variety (Jackson et al., 2008)

The idea of designing an MC service-delivery system based on systems-thinking principles was translated into action by applying the three stages of Seddon (2005): check – plan – do, as summarised in

Understand your organization as a system

CHECK

Identify levels for change Take direct action on

the system

to change to produce higher value

‘Plan’ is the exploration stage, where all possible solutions to eliminate waste in order to explore a better design flow of operation against customer demand are given Based on what has been learnt from the ‘check’ stage, the flow of work is improved with new service operations to minimise or eliminate wasteful activities from the customer’s perspective Accordingly, there are performance measures for the newly designed operations to gauge the improvement once implemented; this can create value demands and reduce or prevent failure demand

‘Do’ is the implementation stage of the solutions given in the ‘plan’ stage by experiment, in which the newly designed service operation is tested and gradually introduced while further improvement is still being considered The changes are reviewed continuously by carefully observing both employees’ reaction to them and customer feedback If needed, the process of redesigning and retesting the new service operation

is repeated to make sure that the customers can get the maximum value from the expected service

In summary, once the ‘systems picture’ and ‘logic picture’ of the service organisation are constructed in the final step of ‘check’, the

Again, from a customer perspective, the purpose of the system is rethought and the principles for redesigning the system to achieve its new purpose are set up in the ‘plan’ stage under the supervision of organisational sponsors and consultants (Jackson et al 2008) ‘Do’ is a stage that takes direct action on the system, releases capacity, integrates and engrains new processes (Zokaei, 2011) It is crucial to remember that

‘check – plan – do’ is a never-ending cycle to promote further continuous improvement

2.2 Mass customization (MC) in manufacturing to Mass customized services (MCS)

2.2.1 The Genesis and Definition of MC

Before the concept of service MC is mentioned, the general development of the paradigm of MC is reviewed The concept of MC was first identified in Future Shock by Toffler (1970) and the term ‘MC’ was coined by Davis (1987), who noted that ‘the same large number of customers can be reached as in mass markets of the industrial economy, and simultaneously they can be treated individually as in the customised markets of the pre-industrial economies’ MC was described as a process

by which firms apply technology and management methods to provide product variety and customisation using flexibility and quick

responsiveness (Davis, 1987; Pine, 1993) Later on, Piller (2004) popularised this concept further, using organisations ‘providing enough variety in products and/or services so that customers find exactly what they want at reasonable price’ Hence, MC could be adopted as a strategy

by any organisation to pursue sustainable competitive advantage, whether

in the manufacturing or service sectors

2.2.2 The Applicability of MC for Services

Although MC is primarily known in the manufacturing domain, with a great number of successful stories in its implementation, there is also evidence from the literature that MC is applicable to most areas of business, including the service sector (Salvador et al., 2009), as long as it

is appropriately understood and deployed Service customisation is important because it not only offers service providers the opportunity to offer a more individualised service based on the needs of the customers but, specifically, it allows firms the ability to provide service offerings in such a way as to result in optimised profit maximisation as well (Kannan and Healey, 2011) This statement was confirmed by Winkler & Schwaiger (2004) in their researches in banking industry that customer satisfaction has a positive long-term effect on a service firm’s revenues

In addition, Minvielle et al (2014) found out the need to carry out customization in health care service delivery by focusing on

patient-centered care and personalized medicine Moreover, the concept and applications of mass customization in hospitality industry was discussed in the Fourth International Conference named “Tourism in Southeast Asia & Indo-China: Development, Marketing and Sustainability" in 2000 by Mok et al., which examined some specific service companies including fast food and lodging and see how they shifted successfully from McDonaldization to mass customization model From literature review, it can be summarized that mass customization

in services sectors also consists of two aspects in which “mass” refers to efficiency while “customization” refers to effectiveness Therefore, anchored on the views of Hart (1994), mass customization in this paper is defined as meeting demands of individual customers through the use of flexible processes and organizational structures to produce individually customized services and products at the low cost of mass production system

2.2.3 MC and Service Modularity

Prior researches (Gilmore, 1997; Duray et al., 2000; Kumar, 2004) explicated that modular products and process structures were essential parts of every MC strategy Several researchers – Jose and Tollenaere (2005), van Liere et al (2004), Pekkarinen and Ulkuniemi (2008), and

modularity including cost savings, ability to offer product variety, enhanced flexibility, and simplification of complex systems Salvador (2007) demonstrated that modularization as the breaking up of an object into its components in order to recombine them into customizable alternatives However, since service components are a combination of processes, people skills, and materials that must be integrated to result in the designed service (Goldstein et al., 2002), there is thus some limitations to this breaking up.Later,Pekkarinen and Ulkuniemi (2008) provided an account of modularity in service-design as the combination

of one or several service modules into a final modular service With this concept of modularity for service organisations, it was demonstrated that service-modularity is an essential part of an MC approach for any service organisation

2.2.4 MC and Customer Integration

In order to implement MC, Salvador et al (2009) believed that one of the three fundamental capabilities a business requires is the ability to help customers identify or build solutions to their own needs, commonly known as customer integration Duray et al (2000) argued that the level

of customer integration is a critical-factor for the customisation uniqueness and the type of customisation defined by Lampel and

standardisation, segmented standardisation, customised standardisation, tailored customisation, and pure customisation However, customer involvement does not come without cost; therefore, as Duray (2002) noted, MC as a strategic approach needs to be supported by appropriate systems that are able to support the extensive interactions created by customer integration and co-creation

2.2.5 MC and IT Integration

To deal with costs emerging from customer integration in the implementing of MC solutions, Piller et al (2004) suggested that organisations’ manufacturing systems need to be extended with information technologies that can handle the information-intensive character of those mass-customised products or services A similar solution mentioned by Haeckel and Nolan (1993) was ‘managing by wire’– an analogy taken from an air pilot’s use of technology to codify information and events in such a way as facilitates appropriateness and rapid response This would increase the possibilities of IT augmenting humans when wanting to customise IT can be integrated to sense the marketplace (customers and other environment factors) and to respond appropriately Software tools are also readily available, including databases and workflow applications; however, as Chen (2007) notes,

business implement it, can they acquire the right people, with the right skills, including implementation skills

2.2.6 MCS in Higher Education

In a world where change is the order of the day, it no longer makes sense to offer a one-size-fits-all education anymore because students are considered as a special type of customers, from business perspective, who are not homogenous but vary considerably (Schuwer & Kusters, 2014) The need for more diversity is heralded all over the globe, which urged to offer ‘personalized learning’, ‘tailor-made education’, and ‘customized learning’ (OECD, 2004) In addition, advanced information technology are bringing about the highest-ever possibility of mass customization in education to improve the quality of education (Hodgkinson-Williams 2010) and to give more choices for learners in every field of study, at any time, in everywhere all over the world without any boundaries This school of research seems to prevail in literature of mass customization in higher education since 2001 However, at the meantime, student centrality

in higher education system plays a paramount importance to drive up quality where the measure of quality is “student satisfaction” (Browne 2010) MCS could be defined as the capability of HEIs as service organizations to provide students services which best meet individual

efficiency (Tseng et al., 1996) In a tertiary organization, service departments such as university admissions and academic registry are typically exposed to a greater demand variety from students than are manufacturing departments (Seddon, 2003) Therefore, there is still existing a gap in researching in mass customization in students’ services where HEIs are attempting to find a way to significantly improve their services and truly differentiate themselves from their competitors (Dunnion and O’Donovan 2014)

In order to provide with a MCS, universities need to move toward adaptive organizations, often referred to as ‘organic structures’, a term first introduced by Burns and Stalker (1961) Due to a low level of complexity, a low degree of formalisation, and a low centralisation, an organic organisational system is designed to effectively respond to a rapidly changing environment Organic organisations are able to address unforeseen problems, issues, and requirements because of their informal communication systems, which allow quick communication, and a flat fluid structure that can quickly adapt to changes and easily change individual activities in the organisation In addition, both student satisfaction and the efficiency of student services need to be optimised in some of the most important university administrative service departments, such as admissions, enrolment, and academic registry The

systems-thinking approach recognises that mechanistic structures, which emphasise standardisation and the elimination of variation, are NOT appropriate for HEIs that need to absorb variety in student demands by provision of a customised service (Jaaron and Backhouse, 2011)

In customisable services, the role of the frontline employee to deliver high-quality customer service to individuals has been stressed by various researchers (Bettencourt and Gwinner, 1996; Wang et al., 2011; Mechinda and Patterson, 2011; Sony and Mekoth, 2012) Kennedy et al (2002) avowed that customising the offering down to the individual customer level often requires interpersonal intervention and interaction As a result, the service firm is dependent on frontline customer contact employees to carry out the complex customisation task (Sony and Mekoth, 2012)

At universities, the service staff’s role in MC is not one of inventing service components but of configuring available standardised components

to meet individual student needs Due to a low level of centralisation characterised by an organic structure, university staff members are empowered to make the work decisions by themselves, so that universities are more able to provide a mass customised service (Jackson

et al., 2008) Due to a low degree of formalisation of an organic institution, service staff members at a university can work together as a

their hands to quickly deliver customised services addressing the various and complex demands of students Further, the tasks are not governed by rigid rules, procedures, or the hierarchy of control, allowing universities’ service staff to identify the right person to deliver the service exactly when and how the student needs it (Dunnion and O’Donovan, 2014) Therefore, there is a close connections between organic structures and roles of service staff at universities to offer MCS (Pham & Jaaron, 2018)

2.2.7 One-stop services delivery (OSS)

One – stop services delivery followed One-Stop-Shop public service delivery model, which was initially developed in Australia as a public administration reform of the traditional hierarchical administrative culture since the mid-1980s (Wettenhall and Kimber, 1997) Today with a diversified structure and nature it can be found in the form of local government One-Stop-Shops in Australia, or Service Centers in New Zealand, or citizens' offices in Germany, or Maison Services Publique in France, or Integrated Service Points in the Slovak Republic, or in the form of Public Service Hall (PSH) in the US, etc (Vashakidze, 2016) The aim of OSS delivery model is to change the nature and culture of communication between administration and customers, or in another word, to give customers exactly what services they want at the exact time

highest level of customers’ satisfaction

The basic concept of OSS or One Door Service (ODS) at HEIs is that students are able to take care of matters related to financial aid, fees and billing, payments, disbursements, registration and enrollment, other student affairs in one visit, without having to be referred elsewhere OSS/ODS typically consolidates several different (but related) services in one location, making it convenient and efficient for students

2.2.8 Systems-thinking and MC in business practice

There has been at least one famous application of Systems- thinking principles versus the traditional command and control thinking for mass customization capability in manufacturing: Toyota Production Systems (TPS)

Despite being founded much later than mainstream US automakers such as General Motors and Ford Motor Company, Toyota has become the world’s largest automaker by volume in 2008, surpassing General Motors, the largest US automaker, for the first time In 2015, Toyota had

a global market share of 11.0%, higher than General Motors’s 10.8% market share Toyota Production Systems (TPS) is probably the most highly developed, best articualted, and the most successful examples of systems thinking applied to business organization in the world (Ohno,

1988; Womack et al., 1990)

While American automobile maker focused on economies of scale through “push” work to make a greater volume of cars in the highest speech, Japanese car producer followed the economies of flow through

“pull” work, which was further explained that manufacturing should be thought of as a supermarket in which, as a customer pulls a product off the shell, a little factory behind the shelf makes a new one to put in its place Crucially, this means that variety must be in the line To retain economies of flow, the same line must be able to make different models

to respond to customers’ varied needs (Seddon & Caulkin, 2007)

Overall, both conventional thinking and ST have impacted on the MC capability However, they are different in various dimensions such as the method to achieve MC, design of work, measurement, role of

management and ethos Table 2.2 shows contrast of Systems-thinking

and Command and Control thinking in relation with MC relization in Toyota and GM example

Table 2.2 Systems-thinking & Mass Customization in TPS

Comparative Dimension

MC

Command and control thinking

General Motors & Ford (GM)

Systems-thinking

Toyota Production Systems (TPS)

Perspective/ Method

Economy of scale Speed and volume

Economy of flow Flow & heartbeat Design of work Functional specialization

“Push” work Forecast (Guess what to make), Schedule &

plan (make it), manage inventories, set budgets

& Targets (see anyone wants it and give s.o smt

to buy it)

Demand, value and flow

“Pull” work Order receipt(Sell it), make it and Deliver (collect money)

Measurement Output, targets, standards: related to budget Capability, variation: related to purpose Role of management Manage people and budgets

“Control” people & work (Function of people

in the production line was to do what the management factory tells them)

Act on the system Empowerment of employee (Manager makes it easier for workers to responsding to customer needs)

Regulation by management

Systems learning/ keep learning Regulation by the customers with workers responding to customer needs

2.3 Summary of research gap

The main gaps in MC literature is the lack of studies dealing with

MC in service operations (Da Silveira et al, 2001)

Dunnion & O’Donovan (2014) argued that the prevailing ‘command and control’ (Seddon 2003) management logic, which can be found at work throughout both the public and private sectors, is the primary cause

of inferior, expensive service Based on their findings, they suggested an alternative way using Vanguard Method, which is considered as one particular form of systems thinking in service organizations (Jackson et al 2008), whilst comparing and contrasting this with the flawed thinking which currently prevails The concept of student services or student affairs is a relatively new phenomenon (Ludeman, 2002) So, the concept

of MCS in HEIs is still new, too Although MC of student services is essential, as analyzed above, little attention has been paid by previous empirical studies to models and tools that can operationalize MC in universities

Jackson (2009) and Jackson et al (2008), indicated that Seddon’s systems thinking is having a huge impact on improving managerial practice and efficiency and effectiveness of organizations but has been little discussed in the academic world

According to Jaaron and Backhouse (2013), the employment of the systems-thinking approach for service operations design has a significant impact on the service-offering organizations in terms of providing a real-time MCS Moreover, an empirical evidence at one of the famous British universities indicated that the systems-thinking approach has significantly enhanced the universities’ ability to design MCS, which are more able to absorb diversified student demand (Pham & Jaaron, 2018) However, this exposes a gap that we need to use different HEIs in different cultures and sittings to ensure that these constructs do not confound results in order to validate the findings of their study Hence, it

is really meaningful if we could find a case in Asia continent to validate the previous findings of a European case

CHAPTER III

CONCEPTUALIZATION & HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

The objective of this chapter is firstly to elaborate a comprehensive conceptual framework based on a case study approach, aiming at exploring key-determinants for mass customization in a higher education institution context applying the systems-thinking model into the design of its academic registry service operations Secondly, the seven hypotheses

of a quantitative research were logically developed based on the results of the qualitative study