Sustainable support services strategy framework for student affairs in South African universities: a resources and capabilities perspective

Abstract

Over the past sixty years, organizational strategy evolved from mainly product-centric to service and solution-centric. Servitization as a strategy alternative, was a catalyst in the paradigm shift to organizational performance difference that adds service value. In the changing paradigm, service dominant logic expanded the horizons to fully incorporate the service sector, and the service users. Researchers have thus argued that organisations can only make value propositions to customers, because value is experientially and contextually determined. Central to the service dominant logic stream is the concept of resources (operant and operand). This study sought to identify critical resources and capabilities for support service strategy, in order to make a contribution to service strategy research and propose a strategy formulation framework for support service managers. Service dominant logic has been investigated in the context of higher education service strategy, and literature shows that the higher education sector is grappling with various strategic challenges including; competition, dwindling financial resources, and instabilities (student dissatisfaction-induced protests). In a competitive landscape of higher education, what differentiates one institution from another? How would university campuses, plagued by dire resource shortages and instabilities, find strategies to attract students as well as public capital and social investment support? Investigating the misuse of resources, Jansen (2023) has gone further to ask, “What explains the persistent instability of a sub-set of universities in South Africa?”(p.2). These are complex and intractable strategic questions for higher education managers, and this made the latter context attractive for service strategy research. Epistemologically, this study followed a qualitatively-driven mixed methods research approach, with an exploratory sequential design. Research was conducted at four South African universities, and the study’s research question was; what are the critical resources and capabilities for sustainable support service strategy in the context of Student Affairs? The main findings revealed a typology of critical support service resources and capabilities, namely; ‘Employee knowledge, special skills and professional behaviour’, ‘leadership, change agency and empowered engagement’, ‘financial and internet connectivity biopower’, and ‘strategy influencing, enacting and functional level interpretation’. A model was developed showing the type of value that each of these bundled resources and capabilities possess. The value attributes of these bundled resources and capabilities were measured through a new scale, named, ‘HedSUSERV’, and the results showed a pattern that supports four of the five value constructs identified and linked to the support service resources typology. Other associated findings of this study included the definition of support services resources and capabilities, and identified a ‘common mission for Student Affairs’ as well as ‘principles for support service strategy formulation’. The integrated results produced a framework for support service strategy. The significance of the study is the contribution to the research stream of service strategy (e.g. servitization and service dominant logic), through the proposition of the framework of support service variable as a contributor to the macro-level strategy differentiator. The resources typology model provides a practical heuristics for practitioners or support service managers.