IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v41y1995i12p1900-1921.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Facilitating Coordination in Customer Support Teams: A Framework and Its Implications for the Design of Information Technology

Author

Listed:
  • Sukumar Rathnam
  • Vijay Mahajan
  • Andrew B. Whinston

    (Scopus Technology, Inc, The university of Texas at Austin, Graduate School of Business, Department of Marketing Administration, CBA 7 202 Austin, Texas 78712-1176)

Abstract

The management of coordination gaps is critical to the effective functioning of a customer support team. To address the managerial challenge of designing Information Technology (IT) to facilitate coordination in customer support teams, this paper develops a framework describing the drivers of coordination gaps in customer support teams. Measures for the characteristics of problem resolution processes, the characteristics of IT that assist in the management of coordination gaps, and coordination gaps are developed and validated. Results from a field study administered to 399 respondents from 41 teams in Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Seton Hospital, and Southwestern Bell support the proposition that coordination gaps arise from a lack of fit between the characteristics of problem resolution processes used and the characteristics of IT used. What is more important, the results also indicate that processes with differing characteristics require different kinds of IT.

Suggested Citation

  • Sukumar Rathnam & Vijay Mahajan & Andrew B. Whinston, 1995. "Facilitating Coordination in Customer Support Teams: A Framework and Its Implications for the Design of Information Technology," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(12), pages 1900-1921, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:41:y:1995:i:12:p:1900-1921
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.41.12.1900
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.41.12.1900
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.41.12.1900?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:mgs:ijoied:v:1:y:2015:i:1:p:17-26 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jui Chiew (J. C.) Tan & Patrick T. Harker, 1999. "Designing Workflow Coordination: Centralized Versus Market-Based Mechanisms," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 328-342, December.
    3. Ludwig Kuntz & Stefan Scholtes & Sandra Sülz, 2019. "Separate and Concentrate: Accounting for Patient Complexity in General Hospitals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2482-2501, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:41:y:1995:i:12:p:1900-1921. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.