Exploring factors influencing service trade-offs in the higher education sector: evidence from Malaysia

What is it about?

Trade-offs are unavoidable in a competitive and difficult economic environment, causing a challenge for those wanting to provide consistently high-quality service across all touchpoints in the service delivery ecosystem, included in which is the Higher Education (HE) sector. This study explores the key factors influencing service trade-offs related to the efforts of academics in Malaysia’s HE sector. The results of the PLS-SEM approach reveal that service trade-offs in the HE sector were heavily influenced by service priorities. Customisation of services, meeting individual student needs, working under immense pressure within tight timeframes, and focusing on teaching and research jointly contribute to academics’ service trade-offs in the HE sector. Indeed, the nature of the job necessitates such trade-offs by default, as academics are unable to cancel or postpone classes due to scheduling constraints and the requirement to be physically present during class sessions. Higher education administrators and managers should provide academics with adequate resources, effective work allocation, and optimal time-frames for task completion, as service priorities are the key factors influencing service trade-offs in Malaysia’s HE sector. The satisfaction of these needs would enable academics’ service priorities and trade-offs to be better balanced, thereby contributing to better operational efficiency, boosting organisational performance, and maintaining business sustainability. The empirical results serve to clarify the key factors influencing service trade-offs in the HE sector, thus expanding the extant literature, which has mostly concentrated on describing the same phenomena in the manufacturing sector. The proposed service trade-offs model would serve as a guideline for operational efficiencies in the HE sector to prevent future recurrence and reduce the potential risk of service disruption, thus mitigating the risk of dissatisfaction.

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