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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2019/2020

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Business School : Common Courses (Management School)

Postgraduate Course: Service Management (MBA) (CMSE11335)

Course Outline
SchoolBusiness School CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryIt will provide students with a critical understanding of the concepts and frameworks required to practice service management. This is a key employment area for our postgraduate students with around 60 - 70% of the graduate job market being in the service sector.
Course description The overall objectives are to develop and enhance the course participants¿ critical understanding of the nature of service management and marketing and the key concepts and theories necessary to understand and practice it, to gain insight about the contribution of service to the economy, both in term of the service industry sectors and in terms of value creation within a service-dominant business logic, and to consider trends and developments for the service sector in the future. The course also encourages participants to reflect upon their own needs and learning for developing as effective service managers, the skills and knowledge that they will require, and develop a plan to address these needs. The course will provide the opportunity for participants to learn from the course lecturers, each other, and from practitioners in the field. The course will require participants to work individually and in groups on a series of case studies and practical issues.

Syllabus
Service in the global economy and the service-dominant logic for service firms
The co-creation of value in service delivery and service
Service design
The service process and value co-creation, using service blue-printing to understand and improve service design and delivery
Speaker from practice I, designing effective services
The customer in the service encounter, quality and co-production (including course exercise)
Innovation and change in service firms
Speaker from practice II, the challenge of innovation and change in service delivery
Marketing and communications for service firms
The impact of digital technology and social media on service delivery

Student Experience
Delivery will be based around two hours of interactive classes per session for sessions 1 - 10. Methods will
include lectures, case study work, group discussions and debates and guest speakers. Participants will be expected to undertake reading outside of classes, outlined in the course booklet. They will also be expected to undertake investigatory fieldwork to support the practice case studies in sessions 4 and 6. There will also be an on-site visit to a leading service provider in the region linked to the exercise in session 6. The course will include
4 x 2 hour tutorials. In each of these, 1 hour will be devoted to working on a case example to support learning and 1 hour to supportive group discussion around the course assignments and their reflective learning paper.


Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Understand and critically evaluate the key concepts and ideas of service management and a service- dominant logic.
  2. Understand the role of the service sector in the economy and the implications of this for the service management task.
  3. Understand how the service process requires a distinct set of managerial skills be able to identify these and to situate them within the service process in the private and public sectors.
  4. Critically evaluate different models and paradigms of service management and their implications both for theory and practice.
  5. Understand and critically evaluate the concept of ¿co-production¿ within service delivery and its implications
Reading List
C Gronroos (2007) Service Management and Marketing (john Wiley)
R Johnston & G Clark (2008) Service Operations Management (FT Prentice Hall)
W Lamersdorf (2011) Building the E-Service Society: E-Commerce, E-Business, and E-Government (Springer) R Lusch & S Vargo (2014) Service-Dominant Logic. Premises, Perspectives, Possibilities (Cambridge UP)
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Cognitive skills
Analyse the role of service and its implications within both service-dominant and product-dominant firms
and business.
Understand and evaluate the role of co-production within the service process and design service systems that take account of this.Assess the options for delivering effective service quality as the basis for sound business performance by a
service firm in the private or public sector.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of a service system within a case study exercises and draw out the implications for service management.
Locate and access appropriate sources of information in order to be able make decisions about effective service delivery.
Locate and access appropriate sources of information in order to be able make decisions about effective service delivery.

Transferable skills
Work in groups to analyse case study material and create effective service business scenarios.
Learn from practitioners in the field.
Learn how to assess real-time service delivery and generate options for enhancing performance
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserProf Stephen Osborne
Tel: (0131 6)50 8358
Email: Stephen.Osborne@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs Inga Ackermann
Tel: (0131 6)51 3854
Email: Inga.Ackermann@ed.ac.uk
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