CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
This chapter gives an insight of this research work as shall be outlined side by side with other contributors view. Many managers and analysis believe that customer services management can substantially improve co – operate performance but despite case studies and theoretical analysis of the optimal ways to organize workplaces and manage labor (Lazear, 1991, 1992, Milgrom and Roberts,. 1990, 1995; Baker, gibbons and Murphy, 1994 and Holmstorm and Milgram, 1994, among others) there is little systematic evidence on the actual impact of these practices on performance. Empirical research on customer service management that does exist tends to focus on blue collar workers in manufacturing despite the fact that most employees work in white collar occupations and service sector are particularly rare, partly because of the problems in measuring output in sector (Grilches 1992). This paper extends the effect of relationship between the customer service management environment and establishment performance to the service sector by examining the branch operations of one of the commercial banks.
A unique questionnaire approach adopted for data source to be used for this research project. Although analyzing data from one company may lead to the criticism that the findings cannot be generalized to other work settings, the two important reasons for focusing on one company in producing the same product using the same production process. It is possible to estimate the impact of the customer service management environment without worrying about the confounding impact of unmeasured attributes of the firms production process.
The extent to which, if any customer management (HRM) impacts in company performance has emerged as the central research question in the personnel/HRM field (see Becker and Gerhart, 1996; guest 1997 for review) although initial results indicate that some customer services practices may have a positive effect on company performance most scholars suggest that more conceptual and empirical work is required (Brewster, 2004, Zhu, 2004) for the moment although customer services (HR) are considered as the most in an organization, they made a difference only for a fine organizations (Pfeffer 1998: Wimbush 2005).
The link between customer services (HR) and firm growth is well documented in classic economic theory overwhelming evidence suggest growth is driven by specialization and division of labour in the processes of generation and attraction/ development of technological opportunities.