Internal Service Quality and the Psychosocial Work Environment: An Empirical Analysis of Conceptual Interrelatedness

There is a need to integrate service quality concepts withconcepts from other research fields, such as the psychosocialwork environment, to help us better understand and create abasis for quality control in services. The main aim of this paperis to explore empirically the relationships between thepsychosocial work environment and internal service qualily. Weuse concepts and measures derived from psychosocial workenvironment theory and service quality theory respectively. Datawere collected from 555 employees in a Swedish computerservice company using questions from a Stress Profile as well as from a Quality Profile. All 52 items from the Stress Projile and20 items from the Quality Profile were entered into a factoranalysis. The main result of the study is not the exact outcome ofthe factor analysis per se, but rather the point that questionsderived from two different research fields appear to measuredifferent mental representations of work conditions. Clearly,interdependence exists between the psyclzosocial workenvironment and internal quality. It is quite concmon to ncap adrestructure service processes in order to improve internal qualityin an attempt to solve quality problems created by organisationalchanges. We suggest that it should be equally inportant to takenieasures to increase work satisfaction by improvingpsychosocial work conditions.