Call for papers: The Use of Analytical Tools for Service Management

http://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=535

Call for papers: The Use of Analytical Tools for Service Management

A special issue of the International Journal of Services Technology and Management (IJSTM)

Important Dates:

Full paper due: 28 February, 2007

Notification of acceptance: 30 April, 2007

Final version of the paper due: 31 May, 2007

Guest Editor: Dr. Hokey Min, Bowling Green State University, USA

As the service industry and service components of product bundling continue to grow and become more complex, today’s managers are faced with the challenge of developing more sophisticated yet cost-efficient ways to serve their customers. That is to say, many of today’s managers are seeking ways to improve the utilisation of company resources, while fostering and creating innovative services. Such a paradigm shift in service management often requires an increased use of analytical tools such as operations research techniques, queuing models, simulation, data mining, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), data envelopment analysis (DEA), and geographic information systems (GIS).

This special issue aims to bring together the recent advances in analytical tools and their innovative application to various aspects of service management such as hospital staff scheduling, emergency vehicle deployment, retail outlet location, restaurant service quality management, hotel service benchmarking, customer profiling, service outsourcing, and call center monitoring. Papers centred on building theory or based on actual case studies will be especially welcomed. Also, papers that synthesise the past development of analytical tools for service management and provide future research directions are strongly encouraged.

For more information, please see the Journal Call for Papers website.