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Linking employee behaviour to external customer satisfaction using quality function deployment

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journal contribution
posted on 2009-04-30, 13:50 authored by Victoria Hanna, Chris Backhouse, Neil D. Burns
This paper considers the relationship between human behavioural patterns occurring in industrial environments to the general level of external customer satisfaction, the hypothesis being that by correlating behaviour patterns to levels of customer satisfaction a route can be found to improve performance by changing behaviours. A modification of the quality function deployment (QFD) technique is used to relate attributes that external customers value to internal behavioural patterns. Situation strength is seen as the key influencing factor on individual and group behaviour, the argument being that, if the situation is strong, then changes to situational variables would have the primary impact upon the behaviour. In contrast, if the situation is weak, then recruitment and a rewards system are better influencers of behaviour. A case study based around a small engineering enterprise demonstrates how the use of QFD can guide managers on the introduction of the most appropriate initiatives to improve performance

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Citation

HANNA, V., BACKHOUSE, C.J. and BURNS, N.D., 2004. Linking employee behaviour to external customer satisfaction using quality function deployment. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 218(9), pp. 1167-1177.

Publisher

© IMechE / Professional Engineering Publishing

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publication date

2004

Notes

This article has been published in the journal, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture [© PEP]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1243/0954405041897022

ISSN

0954-4054

Language

  • en