DISCRETION AND THE SERVICE EMPLOYEE

Services marketing managers have begun to recognize that services can be enhanced hy allowing employees to exercise discretion during servic e delivery. A conceptual framework is presented which considers the di scretion of employees and its antecedents. Two groups of antecedents a re included: organizational factors and employee-related factors. The framework introduces a set of variables to the services marketing lite rature which take into account some of the unique aspects of service d elivery.