| Research on delivering quality service has shifted from an emphasis on variation reduction to a focus on preventing and successfully recovering from service failures. This dissertation focuses on the underlying cause of the vast majority of these failures--human error.;The important findings include that: errors in services are primarily from skill-based and rule-based cognitive error mechanisms, which are of a generally predictable nature; customers and providers make substantially different types of errors with respect to the specific cognitive error mechanisms that customers and providers are prone to evoke; and skill-based errors made by the customer do not appear to be important sources of dissatisfaction--self-attribution of responsibility for the error appearing to play a major role in this finding.;The research also indicated that the ability to observe the effect of an error before it reaches the customer, or otherwise becomes irreversible, appears to prevent its propagation to the customer; rare events are generally more error prone than normal activities; and that rare events and the presence of the customer in the system tend to disproportionately induce specific cognitive error mechanisms.;The dissertation concludes by providing a lengthy discussion of the implications of the findings, suggestions for the service manager, and exploration of several avenues for future research in this area.;Eleven hypotheses concerning the role of error in services, were formulated based on the literature for both error and services. These were tested with an empirical study using the critical incident technique. Reason's Generic Error Modeling System (GEMS) framework from the error literature was used as a structure to organize much of the modern research. The resulting 140 separate incidents were coded according to GEMS and several descriptive factors put forth in the hypotheses. The results most important hypotheses were supported, however four of the lesser ones were not. Additionally, several anticipated and unanticipated observations of the nature of error in services were made. |
