What is service

Service is any activity or benefit that one

party can offer to another that is essentially
intangible and does not result in the
ownership of anything. Most organizations
provide a service of some sort or another. For
organizations
such as airlines, trains, universities, car rental,
health or government agencies
service represents a major part of what they
have to offer. They are known as
service organizations.
OR SER
service organization" is defined as an organization
providing services to "user entities", for which
these services are likely to be relevant to these
user entities' internal control for financial
reporting. Thus, the term "user entity" is simply an
organization using the service of a service
organization.

How and why services are organized is

important.
There must be a determination to ascertain
whether, and if so which, organizational
factors lead to success or failure

in providing a good service.

1.

Sequential

2.

Continuous

3.

Consistent

4.

Logical

5.

As per consumer requirement

Management may well lay down the

organizational parameters. Employees will
be active in whether these parameters are
adhered to or subverted. Equally, it will be
the organization that customers will judge
when it comes to providing quality service.
Ultimately, the organization will be seen as
worthy or undeserving of praise.
Organization realities
Services and products are not created in a
vacuum. They are produced by organizations that vary in size, structure and culture.
Knowledge of how organizations operate,and
why, assists our understanding of behaviour
in organizations. This is particularlyimportant
for services, as customers are involved in
varying degrees in the productionand delivery

process. According to one leading authority in

services marketing, howto organize to
implement the services strategy is among the
most crucial of decisions.Unfortunately, the
literature on organizational behaviour
is contested by some as not adequately
reflecting organizational thatrealities
may obstruct any move toward determining
the optimum organization for service.
Structure of organizations
The typically hierarchicalarrangement of lines
of authority, communications, rights and
duties of an organization.
Organizationalstructure determines how the
roles, power and responsibilities are assigned,
controlled, and coordinated, and how
information flows between the different levels
of management.
A structure depends on the
organization'sobjectives and strategy. In a
centralized structure, the top layer of
management has most of the decision making
power and has tight control over departments

and divisions. In a decentralized structure, the

decision making power is distributed and the
departments and divisions may have different
degrees of independence

Different Types of Organizational

Structure
Organizations are set up in specific ways to
accomplish different goals, and the structure
of an organization can help or hinder its
progress toward accomplishing these goals.
Organizations large and small can achieve
higher sales and other profit by properly
matching their needs with the structure they
use to operate. There are three main types of
organizational structure: functional, divisional
and matrix structure.

Functional Structure
Functional structure is set up so that each
portion of the organization is grouped
according to its purpose. In this type of
organization, for example, there may be a
marketing department, a sales department
and a production department. The functional
structure works very well for small businesses
in which each department can rely on the
talent and knowledge of its workers and
support itself. However, one of the drawbacks
to a functional structure is that the
coordination and communication between
departments can be restricted by the
organizational boundaries of having the
various departments working separately.
Divisional Structure
Divisional structure typically is used in larger
companies that operate in a wide geographic
area or that have separate smaller
organizations within the umbrella group to
cover different types of products or market
areas. For example, the now-defunct

Tecumseh Products Company was organized

divisionally--with a small engine division, a
compressor division, a parts division and
divisions for each geographic area to handle
specific needs.
The benefit of this structure is that needs can
be met more rapidly and more specifically;
however, communication is inhibited because
employees in different divisions are not
working together. Divisional structure is costly
because of its size and scope. Small
businesses can use a divisional structure on a
smaller scale, having different offices in
different parts of the city, for example, or
assigning different sales teams to handle
different geographic areas.
Matrix
The third main type of organizational
structure, called the matrix structure, is a
hybrid of divisional and functional structure.
Typically used in large multinational
companies, the matrix structure allows for the

benefits of functional and divisional structures

to exist in one organization. This can create
power struggles because most areas of the
company will have a dual management--a
functional manager and a product or
divisional manager working at the same level
and covering some of the same managerial
territory.

Culture of organizations
Work culture is a topic that many of us are
familiar with, mostly because we work and we
more often than not do this with other people.
The type of organization, the staff, the
principles, policies and values of the work
place all make organizational culture what it
is. So what type of work culture do you work
in? What type works better than others? There
is a large variety of organizational cultures
that materialize in different environments;

some occur au natural and some are

implemented by the higher-ups in the
company. Workplace ethos silently (and
sometimes not-so-silently) guide employees
on how to behave amongst each other, with
customers and with management.
Importance of Organizational Culture
The culture of a workplace makes the
organization what it is. Culture is the sum of
attitudes, customs and beliefs that distinguish
one group of people from another.
Organizational culture is no different from
ethnic culture except it usually includes
people from all different backgrounds and
histories. These cross-cultural connections
can blossom into ingenuity and understanding
that promote a better workplace and arguably
a better world community. An office culture
creates a unique brand for a company which
helps them stand out amongst the rest of
their competitors. It also defines standards
and set procedures that give the company
and furthermore the employees direction as

they conduct their daily business. Culture

unifies people and allows them to learn from
one another and strive to be the best they
can be. No company exists without a culture,
but every company operates under a different
type of one.
Types of organization culture
The Four Major Culture
The Hierarchy (Control) Culture
The earliest approach to organizing in the
modern era was based on the work of a
German sociologist, Max Weber, who studied
government organizations in Europe during
the early 1900s. To accomplish this, Weber
(1947) proposed seven characteristics rules,
specialization, meritocracy, hierarchy,
separate ownership, impersonality, and
accountability. These characteristics were
highly effective in accomplishing their
purpose and were adopted widely in
organizations whose major challenge was to
generate efficient, reliable, smoothly flowing,

predictable output. Because the environment

was relatively stable, tasks and functions
could be integrated and coordinated,
uniformity in products and services was
maintained, and workers and jobs were under
control. Clear lines of decision-making
authority, standardized rules and procedures,
and control and accountability mechanisms
were valued as the keys to success.
2. The Market (Compete) Culture
Another form of organizing became popular
during the late 1960s as organizations faced
new competitive challenges. This form relied
on a fundamentally different set of
assumptions than the hierarchy did and was
based largely on the work of Oliver Williamson
(1975),3 Bill Ouchi (1981), and their
colleagues. These organizational scholars
identified an alternative set of activities that
they argued served as the foundation of
organizational effectiveness. The most
important of these was transaction costs.

3. The Clan (Collaborate) Culture

A third ideal form of organization is
represented by the upper-left quadrant in. It is
called a clan because of its similarity to a
family-type organization. They seemed more
like extended families than economic entities.
Instead of the rules and procedures of
hierarchies or the competitive profit centers
of markets, typical characteristics of clan-type
firms were teamwork, employee involvement
programs, and corporate commitment to
employees.
4. The Adhocracy (Create) Culture
As the developed world shifted from the
industrial age to the information age, a fourth
ideal type of organizing emerged. It is an
organizational form that is most responsive to
the hyperturbulent, ever-accelerating
conditions that increasingly typify the
organizational world of the twenty-first
century. It was assumed that adaptation and
innovativeness lead to new resources and
profitability, so emphasis was placed on

creating a vision of the future, organized

anarchy, and disciplined imagination
5.Normative Culture
This is your everyday corporate workplace.
Normative culture is very cut and dry,
following strict regulations and guidelines that
uphold the policies of the organization.
Employees rarely deviate from their specific
job role, break rules or do anything other than
what is asked of them. These type of
organizations run a tight ship and are not
suited for every type of employee.
6.Club Culture
Nothing but the best. This type of culture
requires employees to be very skilled and
competent in their niche of work. Educational
qualifications, prior work experience and even
personal interests are taken into consideration
before an employee is hired. Club culture can
be seen in organizations like the commercial
pilots and specialty branches of the military..

7.Process Culture
This type of office culture provides a set of
regulations and procedures that the
employees follow. Its different than the
normative culture as the regulations are not a
bullet-pointed list of dos and donts so much
as it is an ideology that the employees adhere
to. Employees know what they are getting
into when they sign-up and are often selfstarters.
4.Bet Your Company Culture
This culture is for the patient risk-takers.
Organizations that follow this culture are
known to literally bet the success or failure of
their company on single decisions of which
the outcome is completely unknown. It can be
a wild ride working for this type of company
as you dont know what each day is going to
bring. The consequences of the decisions
made by the individuals working in the betyour-company culture can be so dire that the
company goes under; contrarily, they can be
so excellent that the company thrives more
than ever before.

Organizational climate
What is Organizational Climate?
Organizational culture is a system of
shared assumptions, values and beliefs that
governs how people behave in organizations.
The culture of an organization provides
boundaries and guidelines that help members
of the organization know the correct way to
perform their jobs.
The culture of an organization is ingrained in
the behavior of the members of an
organization and is very difficult to change.
For this reason, culture can be thought of as
the 'personality' of the organization. The
unique culture of an organization creates a
distinct atmosphere that is felt by the people
who are part of the group, and this
atmosphere is known as the climate of an
organization. We define organizational
climate as how members of an organization
experience the culture of an organization.

The climate of an organization is subject to

change frequently and can be shaped by the
upper management of an organization. If
culture represents the personality of the
organization, climate is the organization's
mood. Organizational climate is much easier
to experience and measure than
organizational culture and also much easier to
change.
Types of Organizational Climate
There are many different types of climates
that can be produced by the culture of an
organization and they can be grouped in
many different ways. One way to categorize
the different types of organizational climates
is climates that are people-oriented, ruleoriented, innovation-oriented and goaloriented.
Avoiding action
Over-conforming: Action is often avoided by
resorting to a strict interpretation of

ones responsibility, e.g. The rules clearly say

and citing supportive precedents, e.g. Its always been done this way.
Rigid adherence to rules can be potentially explosive in a service like social security.
The situation may be defused by
distancing oneself from the rules, e.g. I dont
make the rules, or Listen, if it were
up to me .
Passing the buck: Responsibility for doing
something is passed to someone else,
e.g. Im too busy or Thats not my job.
Playing dumb: An unwanted task is
avoided by falsely pleading ignorance or
inability, e.g. I dont know anything about that
or X is better able to handle that .
Depersonalizing: Unwanted demands
from clients or subordinates are avoided
by treating them as objects or numbers rather
than people, e.g. a doctor may refer
to hospital patients not by name but by their
illness, talking about them in the
third person, using medical terminology
incomprehensible to patients, avoiding
eye contact, and providing curt and
patronizing answers to patients questions.

Avoiding blame
Buffing: This term was coined to describe the
practice of rigorously documenting
activity or fabricating documents to project an
image of competence and thoroughness. It is widely referred to as covering
your ass.
Playing safe: Situations that may reflect
unfavourably on a person are avoided.
Justifying: Responsibility for a certain
event is minimized by acknowledging
partial responsibility and including some
expression of remorse.
Scapegoating: Blame is deflected to
others.
Empowerment
This article presents an empowerment model
(EM) to be used by service users in human
service organizations (HSOs). The EM is a
structure for service user input to be
integrated within the HSO at various
administrative levels through a four-step

sequential process. The article fills a distinct

void in the literature as there are numerous
accounts about the importance of
empowerment, but few on processes that
need to be defined to operationalize the
concept. Implications are directed toward
administrators as they need to take
leadership in implementing the EM in order to
deliver more efficient and relevant services to
their clients.
It has been stated that many organizations
have discovered that to be truly responsive to customer needs, front-line providers
need to be empowered to accommodate
customer requests and to recover on the spot
when things go wrong. Empowerment
means giving employees the desire, skills,
tools and authority to serve the customer.
Teamwork the traditional control model
operates vertically whereas teamwork
emphasizes horizontal cooperation between
employees from different functional
areas, coming together to form a team.

 Appropriate measurements, rewards and

recognition employees should be
rewarded for performance in meeting
customer-based standards.
Development of a service culture
throughout the organization there needs to be
a recognition of the importance of service.