Towards a typology of professional service operations: Implications for quality management

Professional services are increasingly being procured and produced around us. Managing their quality, however, is not as easy as it may seem. Our thesis is that quality management of pure services needs to be approached with the same rigour, but a different approach from that of manufacturing operations. Drawing on extant literature, we develop an operational definition of professional service operations (PSO) by identifying the sources of homogeneity across various professional services. Furthermore, by identifying the sources of heterogeneity, we develop a typology of PSOs. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework for managing quality of the complex professional services.