My doctoral dissertation examines how private security services serve the needs of the client at health care establishments and how to develop these services in terms of business and quality of service.

The research is divided into three main themes. First, we investigate the violence against doctors and the threats they are facing at health care establishments. Then, from the point of view of legislation, we examine the different possibilities of private security services to solve this problem within the scope of abilities. Finally, look at the perspective of the buyer, the supervising authority and service provider’s lower middle management and staff. These answers are compared with the research conducted in 2010, where similar issues were investigated from the purchasers of services and from the top management of service organizations.

Violence against the Physicians

The health care environment is selected because it provides several legal considerations of services and how they should be provided. The interesting issue is the amount of violence and threat of violence physicians face in their work. This part of the study is carried out as a quantitative analysis examining the results of the survey conducted by the Finnish Medical Association in 2015 for doctors.

Review of legislation

Another key aspect of the study is the review of legislation. In this respect, this research is groundbreaking since the legislation on private security services (1085/2015) was renewed in 2015 and came into force in 2017. Legislation provided for the powers of security personnel, leading to a significant change in operating methods and hence the quality of service experience.

Customer and Security Personnel experience

This topic examines the quality and development of the service from the point of view of customer experience and service provider personnel through qualitative methods. The research will utilize the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland Ltd. research on the value production of security services. The results of the survey responses to this company’s management are compared with the results of a survey conducted by the service provider’s lower middle management and employee survey to find out whether all actors at the different levels of the organization see developmental activity alike.

The result of the research is to develop a model for service development and production, which better attends the existing models to the needs of the service buyer. Another, perhaps more important, objective is to try to solve the threat of violence against doctors and to develop this approach or operating models.

These results hopefully provide remedies for better and safer work environment but at this point it seems that the security services provided by private security services are not sufficient to solve all issues that they promise in their marketing and advertising.

Markku Kumpulainen
Doctoral student
Strategic Management