ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter establishes the need for a book on public service operations management and then through unpacking the structure and content of the book explore what is meant by public service operations management.To begin let us reflect briefly on some of the concepts as a baseline for the focus of the book. This book focused on operations management and public service.A public service
can be considered to be a service or set of services provided to citizens directly through a public sector body or through financing of provision by private sector, third sector or voluntary organisations.The public sector is the economic body in which many public service organisations reside.At the most simplistic level operations management (OM) is concerned with managing inputs of processes, people and resources through a transformation process model to provide the required output of goods and services (Slack et al., 2012). Service operations management is concerned with both the output or outcome of ‘the service’ in the sense of ‘customer service’ and also the service organisation itself – in the way it configures, manages and integrates its (hopefully value-adding) activities (Johnston and Clark, 2008). Operations tasks fall into three main areas; developing an operations strategy, improving the operation and, managing the day-to-day operations (Slack et al., 2012).Within service operations two main components are evident: the front office and back office (Johnston and Clark, 2008).The front office is the interface between the organisation and user, while the back office is the activities, tasks and processes being carried out remotely from the user (Johnston and Clark, 2001). All these elements; transformation process, tasks and components are shown to be pertinent in the chapters within this book and support the development of operations management within the public sector and public service organisations. So, why the need for presenting a body of knowledge focused on public service
operations management?We argue that general operations management concepts, tasks and components are relevant to this sector but also, that public sector organisations should recognise that they are a service organisation so should engage with service operations management theory and frameworks. Authors, including the leading editor of this book (Radnor et al., 2012), have noted that operations management methodologies are ‘context specific’ and this means that the discipline needs to adapt, rather than dismiss, the context (Radnor and Osborne, 2013).The chapters within this book aim to develop that adaption process through illustration
and presentation of propositions culminating with a final chapter which gives some reflections on the implications and draws together future research agendas.
