Service Campus- Outline Proposal

For decades there has been talk of a service economy with a shift in patterns of employment and economic activity, a rise of powerful companies in retail and finance, and a wave of new methods for maximizing productivity in services.

In parallel public services becoming customer oriented, with greater specification of service levels, performance management, codes, charters and some sharp improvements in reliability, speed of response.

But despite the ubiquity of services there remains great dissatisfaction with what they provide. Within the private sector essentially manufacturing models are still being applied – precise specification, performance monitoring, standardized components and protocols – very distant from the sort of service people most want, and which the wealthy are prepared to pay for: personal, direct, involving understanding. Within the public sector some of the same private sector models are increasingly being applied, with a thin veneer of genuine service but often equally little real attention to the clients needs. Within our culture more generally there is still unease with the very idea of service, which is associated with servility and humiliation.

We believe that the time is ripe for a radical change to how we do service and how we think about it. We lack any institutions truly committed to service – to understanding it, promoting it, cultivating it. Hence the proposal for a Service Campus to act as a change agent across the public and private sectors.

The Campus would combine research, consultancy, training and advocacy.

It would be a centre for global research on the nature of service, what makes it work, what customers value, how different models of service organization combine economic efficiency and high levels of service experience. interdisciplinary involving psychology, economics, business studies, sociology. It would aim to be a centre for service design with demonstration sites as well as courses and research.

It would be a centre for learning, with a series of curriculums designed to help people manage and provide services, including: senior managers; professionals – doctors, police, law and accounting: front line staff – with an emphasis on cultivating qualities of service as well as techqniues. It would provide short course modules as parts of professional development – doctors, nurses, police officers, financial advisers, as well as longer courses for management, leadership roles in service, potentially tied into MBAs and MPAs.

It would be a centre for advocacy, making the case for a greater attention to the details of service in the major private and public sectors, working in collaboration with consumer organizations. In particular it would advocate why service is often more important than leadership.

The campus would combine a physical location in a major region with substantial service industries around it; a virtual distance learning component; and a series of franchises.

It would build up through a series of elements:

• A research programme, possibly initially grounded in an existing university

• Course development for 3-4 selected professions, management

• Very different courses aimed at future workforce and those parts of future workforce currently unprepared for service roles

• Building up the field of service design and providing a focal point for the many companies and social enterprises now involved in the field

• Engagement with service users and developing the field of user engagement and user involvement in innovation

Search

Paul Barker reviews new book on belonging

Diabetes in Tower Hamlets

Leadership and values in difficult times

Lunchtime seminar

Stay up to date with news, events & other developments. Signup for our occasional e-newsletter: