CSM held the first in a series of thought-provoking seminars featuring speakers from across the discipline of service management. The “Food for Thought” seminar series aims to play a leading role in the development of theoretical and critical approaches to service management, and to promote a wider discussion with academics from within the school and beyond.

In the first session, Professors Christof Backhaus and Markus Blut from Newcastle University discussed autonomy and performance outcomes in services. Inspired by interactional psychology and based mainly on research in work psychology, Professors Backhaus and Blut proposed that motivational, informational and structural moderators impact the link between autonomy and performance.  Results indicated that motivational moderators have a negative impact on the autonomy-performance link, while informational moderators largely show positive effects. Structural moderators which are related to financial elements weakened the impact of autonomy on performance, while experience-related structural mechanisms allowed autonomy to have its full effect on performance.