In this article, I describe the work performed by service providers, defined broadly, and the changes in this work engendered by an increasing reliance on encounters as a form of service delivery. This delivery mechanism facilitates the view of service providers as labor costs to be managed and reduced rather than human resources to be nurtured and developed. The provision of services by encounters may be a prelude both to the substitution of machine providers for humans and to large-scale unemployment.
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References
1.
1. The change in service delivery from relationships to encounters is the topic of Barbara Gutek, The Dynamics of Service: Reflections on the Changing Nature of Customer/Provider Interactions (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1995).
2.
2. “They Rub Customers Just the Right Way,”Tucson Citizen, 18 Nov. 1993.
3.
See also Melinda Henneberger, “Managed Care Changing the Practice of Psychotherapy,”New York Times, 6 Oct. 1994.
4.
and S. Woolhandler and D. U. Himmelstein, “Giant H.M.O. `A' or Giant H.M.O. `B'?”Nation, 10 Sept. 1994, pp. 265-268.
5.
5. Gutek, Dynamics of Service, chap. 6.
6.
6. James Heskett, “Shouldice Hospital Limited,” in The Service Management Course: Cases and Readings, ed. W. E. Sasser, C.W.L. Hart, and J. L. Heskett (New York: Macmillan, 1991).
7.
See also Juliet Schor, The Overworked American (New York: Basic Books, 1991), fig. 2.2.
8.
8. Barbara A. Gutek, Sex and the Workplace (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), p. 165.
9.
9. Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper, 1911).
10.
10. Arlie R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
11.
11. For example, in discussing the automation of social work, Barbara Garson contended, “The goal of welfare automation is to take every aspect of this overly complex judgement away from the welfare worker and have it made inside the machine—which is to say at a higher level. The aim is to restrict discretion and intervention [usually pro-client] by workers in the local offices.”Barbara Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 102.
12.
Robin Leidner , Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Every Day Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
13.
13. Hochschild, Managed Heart, p. 120.
14.
14. Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, 8th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994), p. 22.
15.
15. J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham, “Motivation through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory,”Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16:250-279 (1976).
16.
16. Ibid., pp. 250-79.
17.
17. Figures taken from a presentation by Richard Bowman, AT&T, 25 Mar. 1993; personal communication with Geza Bottlik, 1993.
18.
18. M. Nalywayko, “The Link between Quality Operations and Quality Service” (Paper delivered at the conference “Activating Your Firm's Service Culture,” First Interstate Center for Services Marketing, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, 28-30 Oct. 1992).
19.
Ritzer , McDonaldization of Society.
20.
20. James Heskett, Managing in the Service Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1986), p. 100.
21.
21. Roy C. Wood, Working in Hotels and Catering (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 95-96.
22.
22. Ibid., p. 96.
23.
23. Love, McDonald's, p. 5.
24.
24. Rosabeth M. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
25.
25. Heskett, Managing in the Service Economy, p. 61.
26.
26. Garson, Electronic Sweatshop, p. 105.
27.
27. Customers can check in and out of some Hyatt Hotels by using an ATM-like machine called the Touch and Go Instant Check-In. “Bypassing the Front Desk,”Business Week, 3 Oct. 1994, special advertising sec.
28.
28. Marvin Harris, America Now: The Anthropology of a Changing Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981).
