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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 224 (2016) 28 34

6th International Research Symposium in Service Management, IRSSM-6 2015, 11-15 August
2015, UiTM Sarawak, Kuching, Malaysia

Influence of Internal Service Quality on Job Performance: A Case

Study of Royal Police Department
Kuldip Singh*
Faculty of Administrative Science and Policy Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA(UiTM), Malaysia

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the influence of internal service quality (ISQ) on job performance in the public sector. Data was
collected from 250 police personnels in PDRM in Kuching using survey method with questionnaire as the main tool. The
instrument used to measure internal service quality was assessed via Kang et al.s (2002) 22-item uni-dimensional measure of
internal service quality battery (ISQB). Job performance was measured using an instrument developed by Borman & Motowidlo
(1993). Results of the instruments Cronbach Alpha measurement showed that the score of reliability is above 0.70 which
indicates an acceptable level. The results indicate that internal service quality is positively correlated with job performance. This
study provides insights on the relationship between internal service quality and job performance in the public sector. The findings
of this study may help the public sector to enhance its internal service quality and its effect on job performance. Limitations and
recommendations are also discussed.

2016
2016Published by Elsevier
The Authors. Ltd. This
Published is an open
by Elsevier access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak
Keywords: internal service quality (ISQ); job performance; public sector; quality

1. Introduction

In a dynamic environment, the public sector tries to compete by providing high quality service to its customers
or stakeholders. Organizations operating in the public sector have also come to realise that they must ensure their
services are soundly based on the needs and expectations of their stakeholders i.e. communities, citizens and

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +60-082-678-502.

E-mail address: kuldip@sarawak.uitm.edu.my

1877-0428 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.05.396
 Kuldip Singh / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 224 (2016) 28 34 29

customers (Wisniewski, 2001). In Malaysia, the Royal Malaysian Police have embarked on a journey to enhance its
public delivery system through empowering its employees in order to meet the expectations of its customers.
Nowadays, organizations need to deal with both internal and external customers. Successful organizations need to
emphasize the quality of services offered to both internal and external customers. Such organizations are astute
enough to predict the changing needs of their customers, to concentrate on their organizational capability to offer
high-quality services, and to see the quality of internal service as a tool to gain competitive advantage. Internal
service quality in the public sector plays a critical role in fulfilling the expectations of its internal customers namely
its employees. The study aims to explore how internal service quality would affect employee job performance in the
public sector.

2. Literature review

2.1. Internal service quality

The concept of internal service the idea that the whole organization must serve those who serve has emerged
as one of the most important principles of the service management approach (Farner et al. 2001). Put succinctly,
internal service refers to services provided by distinctive organizational units or people working in these
departments to other units or to the employees within an organization (Miguel et al. 2006). Azzolini and Shillaber
(1998) define Internal Service as meeting the expectations and requirements for success of those people inside the
company so they can delight customers in the marketplace. To Strauss (1995), internal service quality is
characterized by the attitude that people have towards one another and the way people serve each other inside the
organization and it is necessary to superior external service quality. Yet, Mawoli (2012) regards ISQ as meeting or
exceeding the quality expectations and requirements of employees to enable them to provide superior services to the
delight of external customers. Boshoff and Mels (1995) argued that every employee and unit is both a service
provider and utilizer and that internal service quality greatly impacts the service quality to external customers.
Internal service quality includes tangibles, reliability, assurance, responsiveness and empathy. Tangibles refer to
service tools, for example, facilities. Reliability is the ability to carry out the promised service reliably and correctly.
Assurance refers to the fact that the provided service makes colleagues feel confident in being equipped with the
required knowledge and courtesy. Responsiveness refers to an employee reacting swiftly to colleagues demands
and providing sincere and timely service. Empathy refers to understanding demand and providing convenient
service to colleagues with communications catered to their needs.
The concept of internal service quality was first introduced by Sasser and Arbeit (1976) who considered the
employees as internal customers. They contend that providing the external customers with quality services requires
the provision of satisfaction and quality services to internal customers. Di Xie (2005) asserts that internal service
quality is the degree to which an employee is contented with the services provided by internal providers. Moreover,
internal service quality refers to what employees feel about the quality of services they receive from or offer their
colleagues. Hallowel et al. (1998) contend that organizations need to improve the quality of their internal service so
that they may provide external customers with better quality services.. ZhenYou (2003) asserts that an important
aspect of internal service quality is to see how employees of a division provide their colleagues with services. Thus,
the quality of internal services affects employee satisfaction. Meng Xia (2003) contends that internal high-quality
services increase employee satisfaction, which results in external customers satisfaction and increased
organizational performance.

2.2. Job performance

In general, job performance is defined as actions or behaviours relevant to organizational goals (Campbell,
1990), which includes both productive and counterproductive employee behaviours that contribute to or detract from
organizational goals (Hunt, 1996). Viswesvaran and Ones (2000) introduced a more recent definition of job
performance as behaviour and outcomes that employees undertake which contribute to organizational goals. This
means job performance refers to the effectiveness of individual behaviours that contribute to organisational
objectives and should consist of task performance and contextual performance (Motowidlo, 2003). Both constructs
are influenced by different factors, for instance job-related experience determines task performance while
30 Kuldip Singh / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 224 (2016) 28 34

individuals personality type determines contextual performance (Motowidlo and Van Scotter, 1994). Organ (1998)
argues that term job performance may need to be redefined to essentially broaden this construct to include non-
productivity or extra-role dimensions such as cooperation, helping co-workers and superiors and generalized
tendencies toward compliance. Organ further proposed that job performance should be measured to the extent to
which employees engage in organizational citizenship behaviours. Sarmiento and Beale (2007) refer job
performance as the result of two elements, which consist of the abilities and skills (natural or acquired) that an
employee possesses, and his/her motivation to use them in order to perform a better job. In this study, the meaning
of job performance refers to task performance or in-role job performance as defined by Motowidlo (2003) as the
organizations total expected value on task related proficiency of an employee, or fulfilment of tasks that are
required by the formal job description. In other words, task performance is the behaviors related specifically to
performing job-related matters. Therefore, from the above definitions it is clear that job performance is related to the
extent to which an employee is able to accomplish the task assigned to him or her and how the accomplished task
contributes to the realization of the organizational goal. (Mawoli and Babandako, 2011).
Job performance has been identified as the significant key for organizations to gain competitive advantage and
superior productivity. Although competitive advantage is more relevant to private sector, it can be extended to
public sector by including serving the public because it is the ultimate objective of the public sector. Study by
Vermeeren et al., (2009) has proved that work performance could help public organization to improve service
delivery. Realizing its importance, public organizations seem to pay attention on work performance in relation to
formulating policies and enhance service delivery (Leeuw, 1996). This is because individual public employees level
of performance acts as a mirror for overall public performance at large. Hence, public employees must possess
relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities to execute task-related responsibilities. Public service employees also must
be willing to walk the extra miles in striving to perform at a level beyond expectations (Caron and Giauque, 2006;
Arawati, Barker and Kandampully, 2007) With respect to public service delivery, individual employees
performance is closely related to customer satisfaction (Fountain, 2001) because the service delivery take place
during the contact moments between employee and customer. Therefore, employees work performance is crucial to
government services and high work performance among employees is a significant management challenge for
providing excellent services to the public at all levels.

3. Methodology

A survey design was used to reach the research objectives. The specific design was the cross sectional design,
where a sample is drawn from a population at a particular point in time (Shaughnessy & Zechmeister, 1997). About
250 questionnaires were distributed to employees in the Royal Police Department. About 212 employees returned
back the questionnaire giving a response rate of 84 %. Employee engagement was measured by scale developed by
Gallup organization. Results of the instruments Cronbach Alpha measurement show that the score of reliability is
above .70 which indicates an acceptable level. This is summarized in Table 1.

This study intends to test the following hypothesis:

H1: There is a significant relationship between internal service quality and job performance.
H2a: There is a significant relationship between reliability and job performance
H2b: There is a significant relationship between assurance and job performance
H2c: There is a significant relationship between tangibles and job performance
H2d: There is a significant relationship between empathy and job performance
H2e: There is a significant relationship between responsiveness and job performance

The majority of the respondents were male (53.8 percent) and aged between 31 to 45 years old (51.9 percent)
and mostly were married. 64.6 percent were Malays followed by Bidayuh (15.6 percent). About 46.5 percent of the
sample had SPM qualification. As for length of service 31 percent had served for 3 to 9 years followed by 19.7
percent for more than 20 years. About 84.3 percent of the respondents were from the Support Group. About 72.5
percent of the respondents earned between RM1000 to RM3000. This is summarized in Table 2.
 Kuldip Singh / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 224 (2016) 28 34 31

Table 1. Reliability analysis, mean and standard deviation scores ( N=212).

Variables No. of Items Cronbachs Alpha Mean S. D.

nternal Service Quality 22 .938 3.38 .596
Job Performance 10 .727 3.59 .504

Table 2. Respondents profile.

Profile No. of Respondents Percentages

Gender
Male 114 53.8
Female 98 46.2

Age
Below 25 years old 23 10.8
26-30 years old 39 18.4
31-40 years old 75 35.4
37-45 years old 35 16.5
46-50 years old 17 8.0
51-55 years old 18 8.5
Over 55 years 5 2.4

Race
Malay 137 64.6
Bidayuh 33 15.6
Iban 18 8.5
Chinese 11 5.2
Melanau 9 4.2
Others 4 1.9

Marital status 25 17.6

Single 117 82.4
Married

Educations level
SPM 66 46.5
STPM 24 16.9
Diploma 16 11.3
Degree 17 12.0
Others 19 13.4

Year of services
< 3 years 21 14.8
3-6 years 22 15.5
6-9 years 22 15.5
9-12 years 19 13.4
12-15 years 14 9.9
15-20 years 16 11.3
More than 20 years 28 19.7

Job Category
Group A 22 15.5
Group B 120 84.5

Gross Salary
< RM 1000 18 12.7
RM1000-RM2,000 59 41.5
RM2001-RM3000 44 31.0
RM3001-RM4000 19 13.4
More than RM 4000 2 1.4
32 Kuldip Singh / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 224 (2016) 28 34

4. Results

Table 3 shows the result of descriptive statistic. The mean for internal service quality is 3.38 indicating a
moderate level of internal service quality. As for the dimensions of internal service quality the dimension which has
the highest mean is responsiveness (mean 3.50) and the lowest mean is tangibles (mean 3.21). And for job
performance the mean is 3.59 indicating a high level of job performance.

Table 3. Means of main constructs and dimensions (N=212).

Standard
Constructs Mean
Deviation
Internal Service Quality (ISQ) 3.38 .596
x Reliability 3.36 .682

x Assurance 3.50 .655

x Tangibles 3.21 .760

x Empathy 3.30 .703

x Responsiveness 3.54 .692

Job Performance 3.59 .504

x Task performance 3.60 .569

x Contextual performance 3.58 .544

In addition, the study found a strong positive relationship between internal service quality and job performance (r
= 0.527; p< 0.01). This indicates that internal service quality had a positive effect on employee job performance.
This is shown in Table 4. In addition all the dimensions of internal service quality also has significant positive
relationship with job performance. This is summarized in Table 4.

Table 4. Correlation between Internal Service Quality Dimensions and Job Performance.

Variables Job Performance ( r value)

Internal Service Quality .527**
Reliability .453**
Assurance .483**
Tangibles .378**
Empathy .400**
Responsiveness .558**
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level

5. Discussion

The findings of this study confirm that internal service quality has a positive relationship with job performance
in PDRM. The majority of the staff perceive that the level of internal service quality as moderate and job
performance as high. In terms of correlation, high level of internal service quality is related to higher levels of job
performance amongst the staff. This study supports previous findings by Bellou & Andronikidis (2008) found that
ISQ help the employees to improve their customer oriented behavior and hence enhancing the overall performance.
Thus public agencies need to focus on critical aspects of service quality such as reliability, assurance, tangibles,
empathy and responsiveness when interacting with their internal customer namely its employees in order to enhance
its employees job performance. A higher job performance level will definitely result in employees serving the
 Kuldip Singh / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 224 (2016) 28 34 33

external customers namely the public in a more effective manner. The study presents two major implications:
theoretical contribution and practical contribution. In terms of theoretical contribution, the results of this study
confirm that internal service quality and job performance are highly correlated and hence contributes to research on
internal service quality and job performance in the public sector. In terms of practical contributions, the findings of
this study can be used as a guideline by public agencies to enhance internal service quality and to increase its staffs
level of job performance. In addition its contribution to improving the service delivery in the public sector is another
important implication of this study whereby a higher job performance will enhance employee commitment to
provide excellent service to its customers.

6. Conclusion

This study confirmed that internal service quality can influence job performance. The correlation test revealed a
positive relationship between internal service quality and job performance. Therefore, current research and practice
on internal service quality need to understand internal service quality as related to job performance. This study
further suggests that a satisfactory level of internal service quality will strongly enhance and promote higher levels
of job performance. This study acknowledges several limitations. First, a cross-sectional research design was used to
gather data at one point within the period of study. This may not be able to capture the developmental issues and/or
causal connections between variables of interest. Second, the survey questionnaires relied heavily on the
respondents self-responses that were selected based on random sampling technique. Finally, the samples were taken
from PDRM headquarters in Kuching only via survey questionnaires. These limitations may decrease the ability of
generalizing the results to other PDRMs in Malaysia. For future research it is suggested researchers explore a mixed
methodology namely quantitative and qualitative methods to get a better understanding of the relationship between
the variables. In addition, researchers can also examine the influence of moderating variables such as job satisfaction
or employee motivation in moderating the relationship between ISQ and job performance.

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