Dear Sir,

Hope you receive this e-mail in a very good health and high professional spirit.

As per our e-mail communication these are drafts of couple articles. According to new rules here in Pakistan, teachers who are interested to supervise foreign student(s) doctoral dissertation/ thesis are required to publish five articles in any Journal/ Bulletin abroad. Therefore, I need your cooperation.

The data collected for my doctoral dissertation is about:

i)Job satisfaction of Islamic school teachers

ii)Perception of Islamic school teachers about customer focus

iii)Demographic data

It would be appropriate if you give me just direction of the work. In my humble suggestion we can write articles on:

i)Job satisfaction of teachers in Islamic schools

ii)A comparison of job satisfaction with public schools

iii)Perception of Islamic school teachers about customer focus

iv)A comparison with catholic schools

v)An analysis article using demographic data

I know you have always a busy schedule. Before leaving the USA, I talked to June Klien and she mentioned that she would help in this regard and article will be with having two names of authors, Dr Roger DeMont and Muhammad Akhtar. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact to her. Can I request to mail her e-mail address. I would highly appreciate your cooperation in this regard.

Sincerely

Muhammad S. Akhtar

Assistant Professor, Institute of Education and Research

University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

CUSTOMER FOCUS AND ITS IMPACT

ON ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE

Customer focus is a key issue for any organization, business as well as educational, that is interested in increasing the value of customer loyalty and creating a better performance. Therefore, increasing the value of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction should be measured and managed. Linda (1998) defined customer focus as an organization’s understanding of customers’ attitudes, knowledge, and actions that served to align products and services with the customer’s definition of quality.

The concept of customer focus has becomes more important in organizational life during the last two decades. Research has been conducted on customer focus in successful organizations, including business as well as education. These studies indicated that organizations that are increasingly customer focused and driven by customer demands are able to meet customer expectations, excel in customer service, provide quality product, and retain their customer loyalty (Albrecht & Zemke, 1985; Crosby, 1979; Deming, 1986; Glasser, 1999; Ishikawa, 1985; Juran, 1988; Linda, 1998; Martin, 1987; Seymour, 1993; Schmoker & Wilson, 1993; Wiersena, 1996).

The origins of customer focus can be seen in the literature of early 1950s. However, its importance has been realized more in the last two decades and has become a primary component of what is now called Total Quality Management (TQM) (Berry, 1991; Crosby, 1979; Deming, 1986; Ishikawa, 1985; Juran, 1988; Linda, 1998). The TQM is a strategic integrated management system for achieving customer satisfaction. Berry (1991) emphasized that the real focus of TQM is always the customer, whoever or whatever the organization perceives them to be. The enhanced definition of quality management is meeting customer needs and reasonable expectations. It was the assumption of the TQM practitioners that most customers are reasonable people with different expectations for different companies or systems. He (1991) further assumed that quality, not price, is a greater catalyst of switching from doing business with one firm over another.

Originally, the TQM approach was developed by business and industrial organizations, but in the last decade this approach has been adopted by many educational institutions, and is usually called Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) (Albrecht & Zemke, 1985; Chaffee & Sherr, 1992; Cornesky et al., 1991; Juran, 1988; Marchese, 1993; Martin, 1987; Seymour, 1993; Sherr & Lozier, 1991; Wiersena, 1996). The major contributors to the TQM philosophy are W. Edward Deming, Philips Crosby, Armand Feigenbaum, and Joseph M. Juran. Other individuals (e.g., Louis Schultz of process Management International, Tom Varion of Organizational Dynamics, William E. Conway of Conway Quality Incorporated, and Sara Smith of Development Dimensions International) have also contributed to the field.

Several key components of TQM are supported by all its advocates. These components, which represent the essential differences between quality proponents and traditionalists of industry who favor management by results, include:

  1. Poor management most often causes failures in an organization. Workers are more critical to the success of an organization than are managers.
  2. The work of an organization must be studied and analyzed constantly. Success is not a result of happenstance.
  3. Process within an organization must be standardized, and everyone must follow those standardized procedures.
  4. Everyone within an organization must have an opportunity to contribute to process improvement.
  5. The work of the organization must be committed to pleasing the customer; and there are customers both internal and external to the organization.
  6. Process improvement is more important than individual accountability.
  7. There must be a constancy of purpose throughout the organization in accord with clear and widely understood vision.
  8. The change to quality management must be supported and “owned” by everyone in the organization, but particularly by those “at the top”. Managers must see an emphasis on quality implies gaining by giving...or improvement by empowerment.

In a quality program, the focal point is customer satisfaction that results from providing excellent service and quality products. Worldwide recognized American management expert, Deming (1986), considered customer focus to be an important component in the life of any organizations. Therefore, he emphasized that key to success in customer satisfaction required the following elements:

  1. Importance of listening to the customer.
  2. Service product features important to the customer include accuracy, speed, dependability, and care.
  3. The producer must provide customer training, work to set customer expectations, and be aware of competitor expectation setting.
  4. Service support to the customer is important.

Customer satisfaction through excellent service and quality products has become a critical aspect in the life of organizations. It became widely accepted in Japan. Following success in Japan, customer service and TQM started being adopted by organizations in developed countries, such as the United States, France, Canada, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Korea, and Germany. Many researchers have conducted studies and designed systems using this philosophy. In this regard, Wiersema (1996) mentioned that in customer focused systems managers’ priorities to run any organization are:

  • analyzing the system,
  • recognizing flaws,
  • challenging the assumptions,
  • remaining conscious of the need for initiating change.

In 1987, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) adopted the ISO 9000 standards for business quality. The internationally accepted ISO 9000 is a set of documents that list the minimum standards for business operation. To be certified, a company usually has a third party review of their business conducted, using ISO standards. Since realizing the importance, management experts have been developing similar standards for quality education. ISO has different levels and types of certification. ISO standards include 20 elements that address issues of policies, procedure, and data related to customers, management, human resources, operations, and control. Related to customer focus, the ISO standards are:

  • Identify customer requirements.
  • Adopt procedures to set customer expectations.
  • Use customer defined quality standards.
  • Maintain customer records.
  • Collect data on customer complaints.
  • Design a process to follow-up on customer complaints.
  • Train customer contact staff.

In the ISO standards, quality is considered an important component and as is one of the most important factors of customer focus. Crosby (1984) developed the “Zero Defect Theory” which suggested any error in service and production was unacceptable. He contended that quality improvement was based on “doing it right the first time” (DIRFT) (Crosby, 1984). Excerpts from his original theory written in 1961 are as follows:

  • People are carefully conditioned throughout their private life to accept the fact that people are not perfect and will therefore, make mistakes … It becomes fashionable to say, “People are humans and human make mistakes…
  • The question must arise, then, as to whether people have a built-in-defect ratio… Can we assume that a person who errs in 5 percent of their industrial activities will be shortchanged on 5 percent of the checks they cash each year?
  • If these assumptions are wrong, then errors must be a function of the importance that a person places on specific things…In some things people are willing to accept imperfection; in others the amount of defects must be zero.
  • Mistakes are caused by two factors; lack of knowledge and lack of attention… The person who commits himself or herself to watch each detail and carefully avoid error take the giant step toward setting a goal of Zero defect in all things (pp. 82-83).

The literature revealed that the concept of customer focus is considered to be important to all aspects of business. Martin (1987) suggested that quality customer services could be achieved by balancing two primary components of quality customer services:

  1. the procedural dimension, which consists of system and procedures that have been established to provide for delivery of product and/or service; and
  2. the personal dimension, which consists of service influenced by the attitude, values, and behaviors of employees with customers.

Albrecht (1988) examined customers’ complaints about service in business. He discovered that complaints could be classified into a few basic categories, described as the “seven sins” of service:

1.Apathy:“Do I look like I give a care?” This attitude is often evident top customers in both body languages, tone of voice, and attitude.

2.Brush-off:Employees who try to get rid of a customer by making some sort of excuses for not helping. This type of behavior allows the employee to not be held accountable for his/her actions.

3.Coldness:Employees who are unfriendly, impatient, or inconsiderate, and exude an air of “you’re a nuisance; please go away”.

4.Condescension:This employee treats the customer in patronizing ways, as though the employee is high and mighty and somehow the only one who can determine what the customer really needs.

5.Robotism:A mechanized-type employee who says what s/he is supposed to say or has a smile, but it is obvious that there is no meaning behind it.

6.Rulebook:The rule book attitude prevents employees from using any kind of common sense of from making an exception to satisfy a customer. This attitude eliminates all traces of human thought and judgement.

7.Run-around:This attitude keeps the customer going from one person or department to another and yet another to get a problem solved. (pp. 14-17).

Albrecht’s (1988) study of customer focus pointed out that most major weakness/sins that negatively affect relationships between customers and providers. These sins occur fairly often in a service organization. Albrecht’s plan to improve customer service included the following:

  1. Understand the needs and expectations of the customer and send out positive messages about service priorities.
  2. Develop a clear service strategy.
  3. Educate the employees and establish high standards.
  4. Organize the structure to support service.
  5. Implement the new plan.
  6. Reinforce the new orientation and maintain it through measurement and rewards (Albrecht, 1988, p. 18).

The Director of Customer service Quality Assurance for British Airways provided his assessment of customer service:

If you are a service person, and you get it wrong at your point in the customer’s chain of experience, you are very likely erasing from the customer’s mind all the memories of the good treatment he or she may have had up until you. But if you get it right, you have a chance to undo all the wrong that may happened before the customer got to you. (Albrecht & Zemke, 1985, p. 32)

Customer focus being a focal point of business organizations provided better services and quality products. In light of business experience, the concept of customer focus should be implemented into education considering students and parents customers of education. Many other countries like United States and Japan have already taken initiative to implemented this concept in education side. It is highly recommended that policy makers, administrators, teachers and all other staff, should give importance to the concept of ‘customer focus’ to achieve quality education.

References and Bibliography

Albrecht, K. (1988). At America's service. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.

Albrecht, K., & Zemke, R. (1985). Service America. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.

Berry, T. H. (1991). Managing the quality transformation. New York: McGraw Hills Inc.

Crosby, P. B. (1979). Quality is free. New York: McGraw Hill Book Co.

Crosby, P. B. (1984). Quality without tears: The art of hassle-free management. Markham, Ontario: Penguin Books Canada Unlimited.

Deming W. E., et al. (1992). The new economics: For education, government, and industry. In Instituting Dr. Deming's methods for management of productivity and quality. Notebook used in Deming quality enhancement seminars. Los Angeles: Quality enhancement seminar.

Deming W. E. (1989, July). Foundation for management of quality in the Western world: A paper delivered at the Institute of Management Sciences.

Deming W. E. (1986). Out of crisis. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Glasser, W. (1990). The quality school. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Glasser, W. (1993). The quality school teacher. New York: Harper and Row.

Juran, J. M. (1988). Juran on planning for quality. Cambridge, Ma: Productivity Press.

Linda, V. P. (1998). Faculty and staff perception of customer focus. Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Michigan.

Martin, W. B. (1987). Managing quality customer service: The art of treating customers as guest. CA: Crisp Publication, Inc.

Schmoker, M. J., & Wilson, R. B. (1993). Total quality education. Indiana: A publication of the Phi Delta Kappa, Educational Foundation Bloomington.

Schoenfeld, Ed. (1992, August 29). Mount Edgecumbe: For Many, Road to Success Leads to State-Run Boarding School. Juneau Empire. P. 15.

Seymour, D. T. (1991). TQM on campus: What the pioneers are finding. American Association of Higher Education Bulletin, 44(3), 10-13.

Sherr, L. A., & Lozier, G. G. (1991). Course design, teaching method and student epistemology. Higher Education, 18(3), 3-11.

Wiersena, F. (1996). Customer intimacy. Santa Monica, CA: Knowledge exchange.

DILEMA OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND 21st CENTURY

Dr. Mahr Muhammad Saeed Akhtar

‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ has been a philosophy of child rearing strongly held by both professionals and laymen. Kennedy (1995) reported that both parents and teachers use corporal punishment for the purpose of discipline. It has been reflected from many studies that corporal punishment has been still being used at home as well as educational institutions. A heavy majority of 83% parents were reported spanking their children (Cryan, 1987), and 75% of teachers were in favor to using corporal punishment in classroom if needed (Brown & Payne, 1988). Corporal punishment is an intentional infliction of physical pain subsequent to misconduct for the purpose of deferring future misconduct. It involves pinching, paddling (with or without an instrument), strapping, slapping, pushing, wrestling holds, ear pulling, cracking fingers with ruler, arm twisting and shaking. Despite large scale condemnation, it has been practiced in schools of many countries legally, such as United States, Pakistan, Singapore, United Kingdom, India, Bangladesh, Australia, and many others (Kennedy, 1995; Essex, 1989; Rose, 1989; Cryan, 1987; Freeman, 1966). Countries like Japan, Canada, France, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Luxembourg, Holland, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Philippine, Portugal and all the communist Block have abolished such punishment long ago (Awender and Plantus, 1983).

Every morning we receive news from the entire world over through both electronic as well as print media, about the discipline problem in educational institutions; students are not following the procedures determined by the education/ school authorities. The purpose of this article is to once again bring out this issue in front of the professionals and invite them to start 21st century with a possible solution.

HISTORY OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:

The history of corporal punishment began hundreds, or even thousands of years ago, in the times of barbarians and the Greeks and Romans (Neal, 1720). One of the earliest recorded statements related to the practice of corporal punishment, according to Fall (1941) is found in the Bible. The words of Solomon were, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him" (Fall, 1941). Fall also reported the use of corporal punishment by a teacher Ezekial Cheever (1614-1708) in school, using a rod on a student because the student was not getting the lesson competently.

In United States corporal punishment was used when American education began (Rose, 1989; Alexander, K. and Alexander, M.D., 1985; Manning, 1979; Bolmeier, 1976; Williams, 1973; Freeman, 1966). Essex (1989) summarized the other writers and reported in this regard:

The use of corporal punishment in this country as a use of means of disciplining school children dates back to the colonial period. It has survived the transformation of primary and secondary education

from the colonials' reliance on optional private arrangements to our present system of compulsory education and dependence on public schools (Essex, 1989).

PURPOSES OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:

With the broad definition that has been offered, there has been a long list of the purposes to be gained from the use of corporal punishment which surface from the literature on the subject are to:

a) Compel students to behave in a responsible way.

b) Force students to learn by memory religious prayers or course work materials etc.

c) Maintain discipline within the classroom.

d) Stop violation of rules in school.

e) Terminate an unpleasant behavior.

f) Decrease certain behavior by removing a pleasant or reinforcing stimulus.

g) Increase the probability of a response.

h) Use as a technique to ameliorate negative behavior.

i) Remind the student what not to do.

(Fox, 1993; Demo, 1988; Scott, 1951; Fall, 1941)

THE ORIGIN OF SCHOOL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:

The schools apparently adapted the use of corporal punishment under the influence of religious and political practices. Throughout history for the fulfillment of religious commandments and teaching or mandating of political doctrine IN LOCO PARENTIS employed to authorize the use of corporal punishment especially with the statutory provisions of compulsory school attendance for maintaining discipline (Bolmeir, 1976; Hyman, McDonwell and Raines, 1973).