Date of Award

2000

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Communications, Health and Science

First Supervisor

Clifton Smith

Abstract

The security industry has undergone dramatic changes over the last twenty years due to a continually increasing demand for security services and products. Internal organisational pressure to the security function has forced a rethink in the way security managers conduct business. Traditionally, security managers have only been aware of the level of service that customers receive by procedures these managers initiated. The availability of a comprehensive study detailing customer attitudes towards security supply is useful for understanding the security demand from the end user perspective, and providing knowledge to fine-tune the service. A security manager with realistic and recent end user information concerning the security supply could be empowered with superior levels of operational decision-making knowledge. The ability for the security supply to be better matched to the security demand suggests that the service could operate with an enhanced degree of efficiency, for both the security provider and consumers. Security management will benefit from this study, as the conceptual framework for identifying the supply and demand of a security function may be used to assess the validity of security services across the entire security industry. Furthermore, as the security industry and discipline develops, tools for the analysis of security services must also be advanced. Exploration of the supply and demand of the security function will provide the security discipline with a practical methodology for end-user evaluation. The end user component of the study required the administration of an attitude assessment tool to a distinct group of customers utilising the tertiary security service. The Likert test comprised of twenty questions exploring five different issues that related to the security service. Combined, the emerging results provide an indication of security demand. Security supply was also assessed through the utilisation of a structured interview that was administered to security professionals from each university. This facilitated in the understanding of each university's supply and demand on security. Mean statement scores, standard deviation scores, correlation analysis (dimensions and gender) and the depth interview analysis technique were used throughout the data analysis phase of the study. Comparisons could he deduced between the supply and demand of the security service in relation to the associated dimension group. Results of the Likert questionnaires required analysis in order to extract the most useful information from them and make comparisons between the associated security supply and the contrastive university. Murdoch University appears to offer their students a security service superior to Edith Cowan University and this was likely to be the cause of the consistently greater endorsement of the security issues from Murdoch University residents. A framework for the identification of the supply and demand was developed to assist the university security manager to better identify anomalies in the provision of security in the future. This framework provides superior levels of justification towards the concept of enhancing the university security service. A likely example of the potential for this study to support the security manager is with consideration for security outsourcing. The framework can support for and against arguments for outsourcing the security service, by drawing on educated evaluations of both the security supply and demand. The procedure for this study demonstrates the effectiveness of analysing end user attitudes of a security service as a means to develop greater levels of understanding for the security manager on the differences between supply and demand. This method is designed to assist the security manager to better focus the service towards the most prevalent customer issues.

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