Quality Management Practices for Business Services : A Research Agenda from a Buyer's Perspective

This paper is part of a larger research project investigating how buying companies apply practices of quality management for their externally sourced business services. Quality management for business services in professional procurement has not attracted much academic attention so far, as literature on service quality focused on consumer services and studies on quality management mainly adopted the perspective of a goods or service provider. The insights obtained can assist purchasers to decide on quality management practices to best suit certain types of business services. Service providers will benefit by better understanding which practices of quality management buying companies use and thus become able to adjust their service offerings to better match requirements. Based upon a literature review in the areas of service quality and quality management, the paper will present a research framework, preliminary propositions and a potential research methodology.