Effects of interorganizational coordination and customer participation on service excellence: Evidence from the healthcare sector

Traditional views of business-to-business relations include product-centric, dyadic assessments of governance and control. Noticeably absent is a view of interorganizational service coordination---that is, how providers from different organizations work together to handle a common customer. Examples include the coordination of client referrals in consulting, accounting, legal service, and healthcare. This three-party system of partner (referring) provider, focal (specialist) provider, and customer presents a very different context in which to study interorganizational coordination.;Unexplored and unresolved issues include: (1) evaluating the impact of service coordination efforts upon referring providers' perceptions and future intentions; (2) involving the end-use customer, beyond simple dyadic connections in a supply chain; (3) coordinating the production of service where customers are directly involved in cocreation of value; and (4) understanding the aspects of coordination that are observable and significant to end-use customers.;To address these issues, three separate models were constructed and assessed: (1) a business-to-business model of service partner relations, (2) a model of customer participation's impact on perceptions of a service experience with a focal provider, and (3) a model of service coordination and customer participation's impact on perceptions of coordination and work productivity. In a healthcare context, the models were assessed in three stages. An exploratory qualitative phase, a quantitative pilot survey phase, and a survey-based main study combine to provide insights into interorganizational coordination of service.;Results demonstrate that provider partners have limited visibility of the focal provider's efforts, yet customers are able to make clear distinctions between an assessment of their experience with a focal provider and an assessment of the level of coordination between providers. Moreover, higher levels of customer participation provide greater visibility of provider coordination, increasing evaluations of service quality. Finally, it is shown that coordination between partner and focal providers can impact a focal provider's service quality efforts and work productivity.;This study transcends dyadic interorganizational theory to establish a foundation for assessing interorganizational service coordination. Additionally, this research contributes an enriched view of interorganizational relations, where coproduction of service includes customer contributions, resulting in value-in-use created with the customer, consistent with many of service-dominant logic's propositions.