Sustainable support services strategy framework for student affairs in South African universities: a resources and capabilities perspective
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Authors
Dludla, Sifiso Vincent
Issue Date
2023-05
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Support service , Service strategy , Resources , Capabilities , Value , Middle , Managers , Competition , Student Affairs , Higher education , Student Support and Co-Curricular activities , SDG 4 Quality Education
Alternative Title
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.