Leading The Positive Organization

CHAPTER 4

The Role of Positive Organizational Behavior in Building a World-Class Service Organization

Andrew J. Czaplewski, Thomas Martin Key, James R. Van Scotter II

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

—Douglas Adams

Introduction

Services marketing emerged as a subdiscipline of marketing in the late 1980s. Prior to that time, there was a debate within the field about whether there are or should be differences in the way tangible goods and intangible services are marketed. In 1977, Lynn Shoestack published a highly influential article entitled “Breaking Free from Product Marketing.”¹ She argued that it is dangerous to apply tangible goods-marketing concepts ...