Service Quality: Research Perspectives

Benjamin Schneider is Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland and a consultant with Personnel Research Associates, Inc. For 20 years he was the head of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O) program at Maryland. In addition to Maryland, Ben has taught at Michigan State University and Yale University and for shorter periods of time at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business Administration, Bar-Ilan University (Israel, on a Fulbright), University of Aix-Marseilles (France), and Peking University (PRC). Ben holds the Ph.D. in Psychology (University of Maryland, 1967) and the M.B.A. (C.U.N.Y., 1964). His academic accomplishments include more than 90 professional journal articles and book chapters, as well as seven books. Ben's interests concern service quality, organizational climate and culture, staffing issues, and the role of personality in organizational life. Ben is listed in Who's Who in America and derivative volumes, and was awarded the Year 2000 Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. In addition to his academic work Ben over the years has consulted with numerous companies including Chase-Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, AT&T, Allstate, Sotheby's, the Metropolitan Opera, Prudential, the States of Alabama and Pennsylvania, GEICO, IBM, American Express, and Giant Eagle. Susan S. White is a Research Scientist with the Washington, D.C. office of Personnel Decisions Research Institutes, Inc. She received her M. A. (1998) and Ph.D. (2000) in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland, and her B.A. in Psychology and Mathematical Economic Analysis from Rice University in 1994. Dr. White’s current work focuses primarily on the design and implementation of human resources systems in organizations, including selection, performance management, and training programs. She has worked extensively also in the area of service climate and service quality and has published her work on these topics in the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Journal of Service Research.