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Final dissertation

Holt, A; (2007) Final dissertation. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This study examines the SERVQUAL model for measuring Service Quality, originally discussed and proposed by Parasuramen et al in 1984. It discusses its usefulness in terms of providing an assessment of the internal service quality of an internal maintenance department (The Property Section) within a large working historic building with a view to developing strategies for improvement. It therefore looks at this Maintenance Team's service quality, firstly in terms of expectation and secondly, in terms of perception of delivery through the eyes of the five different departments which together make up the organisation of this large historic building. Information has been gathered by means of a survey sent out to 50 people, 10 from each department. All 5 departments are of a similar size and they all work within the historical building. However, their requirements from the Property Section may vary and only one of the departments is a directly money making / profitable department. Although it must be stated clearly that none of the other four departments are supposed to be individually profit making this is not their purpose. Their purpose is to support all the various activities and roles which go to make up the life of the historic building, i.e. administration, organisation of special events, catering provision. Analysis of the study shows that the internal departments expect better service from the Maintenance team than they perceive they receive in virtually all areas and that the Maintenance team staff themselves also perceive the service they provide to be lower than that which is expected. The worst area of discrepancy between the maintenance team's customer expectations and perceptions is in the area of reliability. The results by department are interesting in that there is a notable difference between the one department that is profitable / money making and the other four, in terms of the difference between their expectations and perceptions. Thus the study identifies and discusses the "gaps" in service quality (see Figure 1 on page 8) where attention will be required in order to bridge the gaps and improve perceptions. Thus it does seem that this SERVQUAL survey is capable of suggesting improvement strategies within this establishment.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Title: Final dissertation
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by ProQuest.
UCL classification:
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1568433
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