Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
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Providing quality services is much more difficult than producing quality goods. Defective articles<br />
may be determined at the end of process, removed <strong>and</strong> not shown to the user. Defective service<br />
has already happened, <strong>and</strong> a user was part of that process. It is impossible to hide mistakes in<br />
service provision. Service must be done well every time. That is a special challenge <strong>for</strong><br />
management.<br />
Clients <strong>and</strong> consumers<br />
The one who consumes the product is a consumer; the one who pays <strong>for</strong> the product is a client.<br />
Consumers provide justification <strong>for</strong> the existence of the organization. Clients provide resources <strong>for</strong><br />
the organization. Consumers of toys are children; however the clients are adults who buy these<br />
toys. Consumers of nice rings with brilliance are nice women, usually not married, but clients are<br />
men with some money, usually married, paradoxically. Consumers of public services are all<br />
members of a community, but the client <strong>for</strong> providing needed service organizations is the local<br />
government that places orders <strong>and</strong> pays <strong>for</strong> them.<br />
Consumer <strong>and</strong> client are not the same generally. Sometimes they may coincide in one person or<br />
subject, in many other cases not. To sort them out is very important, because they are not in an<br />
equal position. First of all – an organization should satisfy the client. Satisfaction of final users, or<br />
consumers, may be only one of the client’s requests.<br />
That is why so many useless <strong>and</strong> even harmful public organizations exist, <strong>and</strong> keep their clients<br />
absolutely happy. Consumers are not happy, but who cares? The distance between clients <strong>and</strong><br />
consumers of public services may be huge. It all depends on how real the democracy is, how big<br />
the bureaucratic hierarchy is, how much it is corrupt, <strong>and</strong> how well the services are organized<br />
For a commercial organization that provides services (or produces goods), which go straight to the<br />
client, who is often a consumer or very close to the consumer, the best indicator of usefulness is<br />
the price the client agrees to pay <strong>and</strong> the amount of sales.<br />
On the other h<strong>and</strong>, each client is a consumer of a kind, because he is motivated to pay <strong>for</strong><br />
something that constitutes value <strong>for</strong> him, although it is not exactly the product of an organization.<br />
For example – a husb<strong>and</strong> may pay <strong>for</strong> drugs to help his wife sleep better, which may be also good<br />
<strong>for</strong> him. Local politicians may expect to become a bit more popular after making a decision to<br />
allow the administration to spend some public money on fireworks of one or another kind.<br />
Organizations usually know what they produce <strong>for</strong> their customers, but sometimes fail to think<br />
enough about what they actually do <strong>for</strong> their clients.<br />
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