Impact of Communication Effectiveness on Functional and Technical Service Quality, Trust, and Relationship Commitment in IT Services
Abstract
Most of firms today are served by specialized IT service providers, internally and externally, for development and maintenance of their business information systems. In these cases, IT service encounter involves continuous interaction between service providers and clients throughout the project. For service providers, clients’ commitment to the relationship is critical for the project success. Intuitively, effective communication and service quality, mediated by trust, are critical factors for raising the level of relationship commitment. This study proposes an empirical model among these critical antecedents of relationship commitment (communication effectiveness, technical service quality, functional service quality and trust) and empirically test the model using data points solicited from two global firms. Results revealed that trust is a strong mediator, and functional service quality is to be a mediator for trust stronger than technical quality. Implications and futher research are discussed.
