Service Work Beaurocracy Orientened Customer

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the experience of front-line work.

In the context of the front-line workplace which is informed by a bureaucratic logic as well as a customer-oriented one, the concept of sovereignty is a myth. the costumer has a huge disillusion when he is confronted to front-line workers with bureaucratic tasks who don’t treat him as a sovereign. This situation will make the costumer angry. For that it is very important to see the costumer as a systematic part of the social relations of the front-line workplace.

In fact if customers can be a source of pain for front-line workers, they can be also an important source of pleasure and satisfaction when they can help them.

The idea of the costumer-oriented bureaucracy suggests that management will frequently be caught in a position of considerable ambiguity, that implies the potential for worker to actively create spaces in which their organizational life can become more meaningful and enjoyable.

2. The role of empowerment and collaboration

The collaboration is a key concept in service work, talk is a crucial dimension of the practice and helps to resolve problems.

In case of a problem with a product the first to experience this problem is the costumer. The fact for the costumer to talk about the problem to a technician is a substantial part of the social work of services.

When a technician make diagnoses he may be solve the problem thank to the “war stories” told by colleagues. If the diagnoses are more problematic technicians can exchange with colleagues. Thanks to his process, new approaches and solutions are developed and constructed and at the same time transferred. It’s a learning process.

This idea is the guiding principle for determining the broader relevance of the social dynamics for services.

If in a service activity you can plan everything in advance and if there are no unforeseen circumstances or uncertain situations to be faced, these dynamic is irrelevant. In this case a manual is perfect.

But in other cases, these dynamics are important.

For maintenance-interactive services, the level of uncertainty or ambiguity is low  manuals

For task-interactive services, uncertainty increases  relational dynamics

For personal-interactive services, both increased uncertainty and ambiguity  relational dynamics.

This learning process imply practitioner within a community. This concept of community is crucial to any understanding of the relational side of learning. A community can be seen as a set up of relationships among people and activity over time, characterized by a certain common understanding about what constitutes good work practice. Such a community of practice is an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge because it provides the necessary interpretative support.

This process of becoming a practitioner ideally takes on the form of legitimate peripherical participation. The learner can participates in the actual practice of an expert, but only to a limited degree and with limited responsibility for the outcomes. Having opportunities to participate peripherally bring with idea of legitimacy, that the apprentice should be allowed to enter the field or the community.

To summarize relational dynamics there is two crucial aspects of work practice :

- Exchanging stories

- Collaboration

In the learning process the important ideas are :

- Create learning situation

- Participating in a variety of activities should take the form of peripherical participation

- Learning implies eventual legitimacy

Working relationships characterized by openness, reciprocity, support and recognition are an essential element of the learning process. There is two level of relationship

1. Dyadic relationship

We can make a distinction between cognition-based and affect-based. Trust can see as cognitive based when a person trust somebody because of a knowledge and trust can be affect-based if the person trust somebody because of emotions.

These two concepts are building block of the process of developing trust. We can identified for stages, the twofirsts are cognition-based and the two other are affect-based : calculus-based – knowledge-based – identification-based – diversity-based.

2. Team-oriented relationship

Collaboration within teams is more complicated, as more parties are involved. In most case a team is formed around a common goal. There is three important phases in a group.

- Dependency on authorities and issues concerning acceptance and inclusion are central

- Counter dependency and fighting. This is a crucial step in arriving at the commitment and acceptance required for the final stage. If opinions are forced during this stage, the group came back to the first stage or might settle the issue in question.

- Trust is established whereby respect for the other as a person is realized and a working structure has been installed, allowing the team to be productive.

This process is a spiral, going back is often easier than moving forward.