Exploring the information technology contribution to service recovery performance through knowledge based resources
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/03055721111171627 |
| Published date | 16 August 2011 |
| Pages | 296-314 |
| Date | 16 August 2011 |
| Author | Samiha Mjahed Hammami,Abdelfattah Triki |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Exploring the information
technology contribution to service
recovery performance through
knowledge based resources
Samiha Mjahed Hammami
Institut Supe
´rieur de Gestion (ISG), University of Tunis, Bardo, Tunisia, and
Abdelfattah Triki
University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Newcastle, UK, and
Institut Supe
´rieur de Gestion (ISG), University of Tunis, Bardo, Tunisia
Abstract
Purpose – The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of information technology in
service recovery performance through the exploration of its influence on service recovery performance
components and determinants.
Design/methodology/approach – A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative data
was adopted since the main research question of “How can information technology enable successful
service recovery?” has not been examined in the complaint management literature. Data were collected
through in-depth interviews with key executives working in the Tunisian banking sector.
Findings – Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV), the authors develop a general framework
to understand the differences in service recovery performance (SRP). The research shows that various
knowledge-based resources such as customer orientation (CO), internal orientation (IO), and
information technology (IT) complement one another to impact on SRP. Ignoring the
complementarities of these resources in assessing SRP can seriously underestimate the impact of
IT on the knowledge assets that are embedded in the firm recovery competency. This distinctive
business competency is labelled knowledge enabled recovery effectiveness (KERE).
Research limitations/implications – Given the exploratory nature of this study, these
preliminary results need quantitative research to refine theory and measurement of service
recovery capabilities and for future validation of the proposed framework.
Practical implications – The findings provide important implications for the effective design and
the automation of complaint management and for the intervening mechanisms that govern the IT
business value.
Originality/value – The paper examines the issue of complaint management from a knowledge
based view and calls for the need to consider specific customer relationship management (CRM) areas
as a set of knowledge based activities.
Keywords Knowledge basedresources, Service recovery performance, Complaint management,
Information technology, Knowledgemanagement, Service failures,Complaints, Tunisia, Banking
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
With the growing intensity and dynamism of competition, the source of competitive
advantage has shifted from physical, tangible assets to intellectual and knowledg e
based resources (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; Ramaswami et al., 2009). Marketing
researchers in recent years have begun giving attention to the creation and
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0305-5728.htm
VINE
41,3
296
VINE: The journal of information and
knowledge management systems
Vol. 41 No. 3, 2011
pp. 296-314
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/03055721111171627
management of customer-related capabilities that foster sustainable competitive
advantage. Practitioners suggest that businesses should deploy customer relationship
management (CRM) technology systems as means to enhance customer relationship
performance.
Complaint management[1] is one special CRM area where capabilities can be
manifested to act on service failure in order to generate superior customer and
organisation value. As new technology is constantly challenging assumptions about
customer service and pushing the frontier of what firms can do (Brohman et al., 2009),
self service recoveryand agent-based complaint managementsystem (ACM) oriented by
web application will be prevalent to differentiate firms with superior responsiveness.
The need for academic work in this area has been recently recognized along with the
necessity for systematically studying the role of IS agents in service recovery
(Johansson, 2006), but empirical work is just beginning (Abu Bakar, 2008; Jarrar, 2009).
Firms that used to focus on developing their service recovery strategy, widely
defined as actions that an organisation takes in order to rectify failures (Kelly and
Davis, 1994), are now confronted with the challenge of identifying, developing, and
deploying knowledge resources and capabilities in ways that create sustainable
competitive advantage. Service recovery performance (SRP) has been operationalised
as the perceptions of employees’ abilities and actions to resolve a service failure to the
satisfaction of the customer (e.g. Ashill et al., 2005; Yavas et al., 2003). We believe that
only a knowledge-based perspective of service recovery is suitable to fully understand
service recovery performance which proposed to be reconceptualized from a
knowledge perspective. Creating this link between knowledge and recovery will
enable researchers and practitioners to investigate the relationship between different
configurations of processes and outcomes and then to design the architecture that
sustain these relationships. Thus, computer scientists must be able to solve the
problem of how such knowledge-enabling systems should be designed. Recent
computer science literature recognizes that, in order for computer applications to
become more customer-driven, there is a need to examine the translation of
specifications from the business to the service, or system level (Agrawal et al., 2005).
Offering some insights regarding knowledge management that enables service
recovery is badly needed for the technology requirements of computer science and
information system (IS). Drawing on the IS, strategic management and marketing
literature, we propose to explore the underlying mechanisms through which
information technology (IT) improves the firm’s recovery capabilities.
2. Background literature
Research streams that are deemed relevant for the firm service recovery context are the
knowledge-based view (KBV), an extension of the resource-based view (RBV),
information technologies, a reinforcement of the KBV, and customer knowledge
management (CKM).
2.1 The KBV of the firm as an extension of the RBV
The RBV depicts companies as a collection of resources and capabilities required for
product or market competition. It adopts an inward-looking view, and emphasizes
heterogeneous firm resource endowments as a basis for competitive advantage (Hooley
et al., 2005; Barney, 1991). Heterogeneity of resources is constituted of four dimensions:
Exploring the IT
contribution
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