Service operations strategy, flexibility and performance in engineering consulting firms

In this paper, the relationship between operations strategy and performance through ̄exibility as a moderating variable is analysed within the service setting of engineering consulting ®rms in Spain. A framework for service strategy dimensions is suggested while manufacturing ̄exibility dimensions are applied to service operations considering necessary adaptations. A path analysis model is applied in order to enhance the understanding of interactions. This research proves that service operations strategy has a signi®cant positive and direct effect on service delivery performance. The fact that is especially relevant is that ̄exibility plays a more intense moderating role for ef®ciency performance measures than for customer satisfaction performance measures. Introduction Operations strategy has been contemplated in the ®eld from a conceptual point of view and has dealt mainly with the content of strategy (Anderson et al., 1989; Skinner, 1978; Smith and Reece, 1999). All this research has con®gured the operations strategy concept as a pattern of decisions and actions driven to support the strategic goals established by the business unit. Operations should ®t the requirements of a business by striving for consistency between business capabilities and policies and business competitive advantages (Adam and Swamidass, 1989; Wheelwright, 1984). However, the scarcity of studies that analyse the effect of strategy on performance through its relationship with competitive priorities has become one of the great challenges in operations management research (Dangayash and Deshmukh, 2001; Sa®zadeh et al., 2000). Moreover, in service operations strategy, this panorama is still more meagre which leads to higher research opportunities (Nieto et al., 1999). Nowadays, the changing environments make ̄exibility one of the competitive priorities that most service ®rms have to deal with. The concept of ̄exibility of service processes suffers from the same confusion that overwhelmed manufacturing for years (Harvey et al., 1997). The nature and sources of manufacturing ̄exibility have been broadly studied, so comparison between manufacturing and services provides a good starting-point for the study of service ̄exibility. Flexibility is generally regarded as the ability to The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0144-3577.htm The author wishes to thank anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have been of inestimable help for improving the present paper. Service operations strategy