http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/ Paper RSS en-us Fri, 18 May 2012 14:41:48 MDT Fri, 18 May 2012 14:41:48 MDT http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/ you@youremail.com you@youremail.com http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=117 Surveys are a critical channel of information from various stake holders in most service processes. Design of surveys and analysis of data collected from them is a well-established discipline within social sciences, and the associated analysis methods can be broadly categorized into quantitative and qualitative techniques. We propose information theoretic metrics to measure the value of combining qualitative and quantitative data from surveys. Specifically, we use the concepts of information entropy to estimate uncertainty, the concepts of information gain, mutual information, and conditional entropy to measure triangulation, complementation or paradox. Finally, we apply the proposed metrics in a case study to illustrate the practical application of our work in analysis of a consumer survey from a service industry. The proposed information theoretic approach offers a scientific basis for automating survey data analysis in service processes, especially when such surveys contain quantitative and qualitative responses. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=90 In this paper, three different scenarios of multi-criteria mathematical programming models are explored under a framework of network based analysis in web service composition. This work takes care of the issues pertaining to inputs and outputs matching of web services and Quality-of-Service (QoS) at the same time. Six multi-criteria programming models are explored to select the desirable service composition in a variety of categories in accordance with customers\' preferences in three different scenarios: (1)Optimal, (2)Compromised optimal, and (3)Acceptable. This set of multi-criteria models have both advantages and disadvantages comparing with each other, and can be used as different solvers in the network based service composition framework. The proposed regular multi-criteria programming (MCP) models is used in Scenario (1): Optimal. The proposed multi-criteria goal programming for optimal composition (MCGPO) and multi-criteria goal programming for non-optimal solution (MCGPN) models are designed for Scenarios (2):Compromised optimal and (3)Acceptable respectively. And they can find a compromised composition based on the trade-off of customer\'s preference on the QoS goals in case that the optimal composition satisfying both functional and QoS constraints does not exist in the network. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=110 What drives new service business designs? More precisely, what could be a generic strategy to grow value cocreation among persons? The emerging network science and service science may offer an answer: comprehensively connecting, or hyper-networking, the customers, providers, and resources via digital means. This connectionist perspective has led to the Digital Connections Scaling (DCS) theory, which suggests that new service business designs arise from thrusting the connections up to span the population, deepening down to facilitate individual persons’ life cycle needs, and cutting across business designs and domains to transform them. This paper develops the DCS theory into a generic strategy for designing new service businesses and justifies the strategy with empirical evidence taken from the field of e-commerce and social networking. The study then applies the proposed strategy to analyze what new models and paradigms may come next. An information systems design framework for implementing the strategy is also proposed. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=101 Many social studies analyze attitude responses using the linear regression model. This model typically treats questionnaire data as continuous scales, although the data is merely ordinal. One type of regression model that is more appropriate to analyze rank-order responses is the Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) model. In addition to the use of regression, the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model has recently been applied in various studies. This paper delivered comparative descriptions of both the ANN and OLR models. The theoretical features and properties, which include parameters, variable selection, and model evaluation, followed by comparisons of the disadvantages and advantages of both models were analytically reviewed. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=105 Clear-cut classification of exchanges into services and non-services is vital for governments to estimate contributions of service and other sectors to national incomes, for businesses to know their tax and tortious liabilities and for researchers to develop new theories and concepts of services. Unfortunately, the definitions and schema they use to classify exchanges have serious shortcomings. This paper proposes a legal approach to classify exchanges. Whereas existing definitions and schema are concerned with trading of acts or goods, the proposed approach is concerned with trading of legal rights and obligations. The time taken by contracting parties to fulfill their contractual obligations has been used to define service and non-service exchanges. The proposed definitions are unambiguous and they overcome the shortcomings of two most-cited definitions of services. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=118 Several years ago, colleagues and I at IBM Research suggested that one key challenge in developing a new science of service is in finding appropriate methods for modeling service systems. Service systems ... http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=84 This paper presents an original description and a semi-formal definition of the concept of a value proposition, which has been so far used in service science rather intuitively. Our approach is based on util- ity functions and conceptual modelling techniques. The proposed semi-formalization can be exploited to describe services from the point of view of their (potential) utility for their clients. This description can be used especially to organize a service portfolio in an enterprise in a better way, aid in computer-assisted service composition/decomposition, and provide additional criteria for indexing services in a service brokering task. In order to be able to describe a value proposition more accurately, we present a semi-formal definition of the concept of a service system. We perceive a value proposition as the main input taken into account by a future service client when evaluating whether or not to become the client of the service proposed by a service provider. A value proposition itself is modelled as a collection of values which indicate the extent of “how much” a given service behaves according to a given set of service characteristics. The presented approach is illustrated on the example of a concrete service. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=103 The rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) composition platforms and so called Compute Clouds demonstrates the growing demand for the agile composition of Web Services. In order to facilitate the composition of services and value-creation, service providers need to collaborate. This collaboration is regulated by means of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) where the parties, the executed service as well as guarantees on the service execution are specified. This work presents the concept of Service Value Networks and Agreement Networks as the underlying legal structure. Furthermore, an approach is introduced that allows a service provider to select the risk-minimal SLA portfolio. In a further step, the approach is extended in order to allow for a tradeoff between risk and expected profit from the service execution. Finally, the computational complexity of the optimization model is discussed and solutions are proposed. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=92 This article addresses a relevant question arising in knowledge intensive industries: defining productivity models; an important issue of increasing importance in developed economies (Drucker 1999),(Ramirez 2004),(Neely 2002). According to the findings presented in this paper service science is a useful framework upon which to understand and further operationalize service productivity, moreover it has been found that service science promotes systems thinking in complicated servicings such as the one considered in this research. The research approach adopted combines relevant theory in productivity analysis with a real experience as practised by a worldwide leading healthcare agency to ensure the validity of the concepts proposed to other industries. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=116 As we know, the wealth of Western economies has come primarily from the production and the sales of services, or in other words, goods that are intangible or “invisible.” But the “invisible” nature of these services mean they come with specific risks, and it is important for providers to understand how best to manage them. In this column, we provide some guidance for risk managers confronted with this complex problem. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=115 One of the ideas underlying the field of Service Science is that we can recognize, understand, and, hence, improve the various systems in which humans operate. Many of the systems studied are, understandably, those intentionally designed and built by humans. Yet just as important are those systems whose structures emerge unintentionally from various actions and that subsequently shape our behavior. One such system is the macro-economy, which is perpetually changing and shaping individual activity in an ever-evolving recursive process. At the heart of economic activity is entrepreneurship, the creation of new businesses, which is seen as the quintessential act of economic agency. The historiography of entrepreneurship is dominated by portraits of men and women bending the world to their will. While not denying a role for agency in business creation, an increasing amount of data as well as new ways of studying startups raises important questions about the structural elements that shape entrepreneurship. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=106 The emergence of widespread offshoring of information-based services is arguably one of the more transformative business phenomena of the last ten years. A growing body of research has examined the firm-level drivers and location factors (i.e., the “whys” and “wheres”) of services offshoring. However, little empirical research has examined the temporal dynamics (or “whens”) of services offshoring. Adopting industry life cycle theory as a framework and a Bayesian methodological approach, we explore two key research questions: (i) when do different categories of offshoring services provision change from being emergent sectors to more mature ones relative to one another? and (ii) how do different types of offshoring activity differentially progress through this sequence? Employing a database of 1,420 offshore services FDI projects, we find that the relative skill level and the information sensitivity of the specific service category are associated with the temporal sequence of industry life cycle progression such that activities with decreased information sensitivity are offshored earlier than those with greater information sensitivity. We draw implications for our findings in terms of future waves of service offshoring. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=85 Consumer Information Systems (CIS) are Information Systems, which provide services primarily to consumers instead of addressing needs of users in traditional organizational settings. Examples of such systems are Internet protocol television (IPTV) services, which are being launch globally at the moment. Design of traditional services typically involves a trade-off between achieving high service productivity and quality. To this end, the use of modularization has been proposed as a solution. Our paper presents a conceptual framework that can potentially enable designers to achieve such modularization for consumers information systems. We present that we should consider CIS as modularized services offered to consumers, not only as systems or software, in order to achieve this. We apply the framework to three New Zealand IPTV service offerings and investigate how it applies. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=107 Service Science (ISBN978-0-470-52588-3, Copyright  2010) by Mark Daskin was recently published by Wiley, A John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Publication. The book is the first of its kind using an operations research approach to systematically discuss how optimization and queuing theory can be applied to solve a variety of problems in service systems, aimed at facilitating decision-making during their operations and management. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=93 The service literature is replete with claims about the important of experience design to operational efficiency and customer loyalty, yet it is unclear when, where, and how flow experience is formulated in service systems. Drawing upon relevant research in flow theory and consumer behavior, this study empirically tests a proposed framework and relevant hypotheses with the survey responses collected from 707 online investors. In support of the model and most of the hypotheses it suggests, the empirical results suggest the important antecedents and consequence of flow channel in e-brokerage services and confirms the viability of the extended dual-layer experience construct to investigate customer experiences. The findings indicate that service designers should closely examine the intended service offerings and customize corresponding service/product features to maximize customers’ flow experience. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=87 Facing rising energy costs and the heightened awareness of environmental issues expressed by society and encapsulated in regulations, sustainability is a major requirement for designing and operating future service systems. In addition, sustainability serves as a key driver for profitable services. Restructuring service processes to meet environmental regulations should be seen as the opportunity to design processes that consume less and thus cost less. Furthermore, sustainable services require service providers to incorporate a holistic perspective that incorporates service provisioning, the service network, and the service customer. In addition, designing sustainable services now promotes the transfer of sustainability as a service from the current generation to the next. We analyze Better Place, a company in the electric mobility industry, to demonstrate the potentials and challenges of sustainable services. We show that sustainability is a major driver of service design. Furthermore, Better Place shows that understanding and clarifying sustainability raises important methodological issues for service design by highlighting the complexity of designing services in a multi-actor value network. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=83 New service development (NSD) is getting important for companies that wish to gain a competitive advantage on service-driven markets. While research on NSD has grown rapidly over the last decade, many studies have been highly fragmented and concentrated on different innovation issues. Few studies have focused on the stages, activities, and techniques of NSD. In addition, the NSD process is delivered through service value net, and can often be carried out by multiple companies. Therefore, this study aims to provide a SAT (Stage-Activity-Technique) framework for NSD stages, activities, and techniques based on a literature review and trend analysis. This study divides the NSD process into five stages: service identification, service value net formation, service modeling, service implementation, and service commercialization. In addition, the NSD process is more likely to be spiral in form for new services that are examined. The NSD process is also likely to be refined by service providers and customers to incorporate their detailed requirements and integrate service value into future development processes. The SAT model can assist service designers and engineers in developing new services by providing a structured NSD process and identifying techniques for activities in the NSD process. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=75 Customer Satisfaction Index has been developed in many countries including North America, Europe and Asia last decades, which are based on ACSI by the University of Michigan, where the latent factor \"Customer Satisfaction\" related to the customer loyalty is estimated by a covariance structural model with six factors generated from 17 question items and PLS method. They apply the identical structural model to all companies in order to measure the national and industrial indexes that are used to compare the services in different companies as well as industries. In this paper, by using the assumption that the same model must be applied to every company, we link the path coefficients of each company as the hierarchical regression model to estimate the CS structure across companies to show that, representing “communality” inside industry and “heterogeneity” outside industry, the hierarchical Bayes modeling produces more stable significant path coefficients. Moreover, our approach has the additional advantages. (i)The volume of information (number of survey data) can be augmented, (ii)The index can be constructed without additional surveys for new company (forecasting) and not-surveyed company (missing observations), (iii)When aggregating individual index of each company up to the industrial index and national index, the communality assumption could increases the stability of the macro index. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=86 Higher education in the United States is rapidly moving toward a marketized model of service provision, one emphasizing marketing practices based upon relevance and student satisfaction. The results of the study reported herein suggest that such strategies may not ensure equal balance between service quality and the quality of education as a service. Specifically, a study is presented suggesting that grades (an indicant of learning) are neither endogenous (positively related to) or exogenous (antecedent to) a typical service quality/customer satisfaction model vis-à-vis Introduction to Marketing courses. If student service quality perceptions, satisfaction judgments, and engagement practices are indeed unrelated to grades at the classroom level, then a question exists as to how well a focus on student satisfaction (and relevance) actually engender student involvement in the value co-creation process in education delivery. The following study suggests diligence in balancing the quality of the educational service versus service quality practices within the context of the marketization of education, and continued efforts by service marketers to better understand the unique service marketing characteristics of the educational product. The research and managerial implications of the reported study are presented and discussed. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=77 This research develops a longitudinal study that builds upon previous findings that operations performance of service delivery can positively affect customer satisfaction, further extending this verdict to point out operations performance as a direct determinant of customer loyalty. Path Analysis is used as a methodological framework. This paper reports the findings of an empirical research conducted in a large telecommunications company operating in the UK. Regarding operations performance impact on customer loyalty, the research findings support the conclusion that while operations speed may help to acquire customers, it is the operations dependability that more strongly drives customer loyalty in the long term. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=100 It is widely accepted that workforce management is critical to the profitability, growth and client satisfaction of companies in the service industry. Considerable amount of resources have been devoted in improving workforce management in industry practices. New methodologies emerge at a very fast pace in various areas. Meanwhile, at the theory front, just like the development of supply chain management theory for the manufacturing industry, exciting new research topics on workforce management are being investigated from multiple angles by researchers from different fields. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=99 The paradigm of cloud computing has started a new era of service computing. While there are many 111research efforts on developing enabling technologies for cloud computing, few focuses on how to strategically set price and capacity and what key components are leading to success in this emerging market. In this paper, we present quantitative modeling and optimization approaches for assisting such decisions in cloud computing services. We first show that learning curve models can be helpful to capture the providers\' cost reduction with economy of scale. Such models also help understand the potential market of cloud services and explain quantitatively why cloud computing is most attractive to small and medium businesses. We then present a stochastic model and a revenue management formulation to address the pricing and resource provisioning decisions for the cloud service providers. The approach enables the cloud service provider a quantitative framework to obtain management solutions and to learn and react to the critical parameters in the operation management process by gaining useful business insights. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=98 Often there is substantial disparity in sales performance across various units of an organization. It is crucial to model the effects of various drivers/inhibitors on sales performance, particularly those that can be acted upon, since insight into such drivers/inhibitors is essential for determining optimal actions for improving performance. We present a framework for sales performance diagnostics which focuses on: (1) modeling and quantifying the effects of various factors on multiple sales performance metrics to help identify actionable factors that can impact performance; and (2) providing scenario analysis and optimization capabilities to understand the effects of taking various actions on sales performance, as well as to suggest the best possible actions to achieve certain objectives given current constraints. We describe an implementation of this framework at IBM and provide examples of analyses to demonstrate how it can be used to support sales performance initiatives. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=97 Call centers are complex systems in which it is essential to optimize the trade-off between the service level provided to the customers and the cost for the personnel. In this paper we describe a quantitative approach to choose the most suitable contracts to hire the call center operators. The aim is to organize their work-shifts and their rest periods, including lunch-breaks, in such a way that the mix of skills obtained in each time slot is as close as possible to a desired level, estimated according to demand forecasts. The approach here proposed is based on a heuristic method which exploits a general purpose linear programming solver. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=96 We consider the issue of new project staffing in an outsourced call center required to meet a monthly Service Level Agreement (SLA). We present empirical analysis generated during a field study with a provider of outsourced call center services to illustrate the unique issues related to staffing a new project. Our work shows that during the start-up phase of a project agents experience significant improvements in productivity that reduce the staffing requirements over time. We also find that turnover, which is typically high in a call center environment, may be even higher for a project launch dominated by newly hired agents. These factors interact with the uncertainty of call volumes and talk time to create a difficult hiring challenge. We develop a model that finds the level of hiring with the lowest total expected cost of operation while meeting service level commitments. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=95 Services usually have a limited life under modern conditions of competition. The life cycle phenomenon is characterized by time-varying demand and a learning curve of workforce efficiency, making it difficult to determine staffing requirements. This paper initiates a study of the service life cycle phenomenon, from which the learning curve is found to be manageable through workforce planning. Therefore, optimal control is employed to model workforce planning over a service life cycle. An iterative approach is developed, allowing for an optimal trajectory of staff size that can be efficiently identified. Results from this study suggest that the learning curve should be considered in service workforce planning if the learning process lasts sufficiently long, in comparison to the service’s life. Under such conditions, staffing requirements are determined by the dynamics of demand, workforce efficiency, and learning efficiency. Compared to the practice of allowing learning to occur autonomously, the control approach has the ability to strategically turn a small incremental investment in service workers into attractive savings in life cycle costs. Merits of the proposed methodology are also highlighted by its robustness in various life cycle conditions. This paper establishes a foundation for studying advanced problems, including training of a service workforce under life cycle conditions, planning the workforce for a complex service system, and managing the workforce under the uncertainties in service delivery, demand, learning, and turnover. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=94 Workforce analytics (i.e., statistical analysis, modeling and mining of HR data) is particularly important in service industries. Service industries are people-intensive and the knowledge and expertise of the people within an organization is a strategic resource critical for success. Performance of employees in a service organization is directly related to the customer satisfaction and creation of value. In this paper, we adopt a domain-driven data mining approach and begin by raising specific business questions in workforce the analysis with a focus on IT Infrastructure Support (ITIS) services and then propose solutions for them. We distinguish between three aspects of what makes people valuable in an ITIS organization: expertise, specialization and experience. We propose novel formalizations of these notions and discuss rigorous statistical and optimization based algorithms to discover these 3 types of people (along with their work areas). In particular, for the important problem of expert discovery, we propose two separate algorithms: one statistical and another based on data envelopment analysis technique from optimization. The approaches have been implemented and have produced satisfactory results on more than 25 real-life ITIS datasets, one of which we use for illustration. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=81 In recent years, clients from various industries have been seeking IBM\'s help in their supply chain transformation to gain competitive advantage. We have developed a comprehensive tool, SmartSCOR, which integrates the cross-industry process standard SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model and a variety of operations research techniques to facilitate our clients\' end-to-end supply chain transformation. SmartSCOR enables structured supply chain modeling as analysis basis and analyzes both static and dynamic aspects of a supply chain. Static analysis includes benchmarking with best practices, root-cause analysis, etc. Dynamic analysis evaluates the performance and robustness of alternative supply chain designs through simulation. SmartSCOR has been successfully applied in IBM customer projects. We present two cases in this paper. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=58 Sustainability is a measure of the capacity of a certain process or state in any system to balance the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. One of the main challenges of sustainability is translating theory into action in the form of operational service offerings. Establishing sustainability as an essential aspect of services in service science and defining sustainability as a service in and of itself will foster the design and development of comprehensive, future-oriented, flexible values, methods, and tools applicable to all design, development, management, and implementation processes. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=60 The literature indicates that there is urgent need to address the significant gap in our ability to value the contribution and interaction of service networks to organisational performance. This paper will summarise the literature review over the past year in the quest to document how we can understand the contributory value of service networks. This paper will discuss how failing to appreciate the value of service networks inhibits our capability to discover and monitor their performance. This prevents managers from transforming information on network activity and infrastructural capabilities into strategic knowledge. This paper demonstrates how social network analysis (SNA) can be a powerful tool for managers to understand organisational network performance and service interaction. Thus, this paper presents the key literature reports and presents how several theoretical fields may complement the establishment of service science. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=59 Workflows are used by domain analysts as a tool to describe the synchronization of activities in a business domain. The Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) has become a standard to characterize Workflows. Nevertheless, BPMN alone does not provide tools for aligning business models and IT architectures. Currently, there is not a method which promotes making decisions based on a technique with a probabilistic basis for providing financial value to a [human] workflow. If such method could exist, it would help the domain analyst to understand what sections of the business and IT architecture could be re-engineered for adding value. Markov Decision Processes (MDP’s) can be the centerpiece of such a method. MDP’s are introduced as a means to pinpoint assets to be designed, managed, and continuously improved, while enhancing business agility and operational performance. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=74 New service enterprises are digitally connected value cocreation networks. From this perspective, we analyze how hyper-network models can lead to new understanding for service science. A hyper-network is an integration of multi-layered (role-based) connections of members in a community, such as the Internet and an ecosystem. Hyper-network analysis creates multi-dimensional understanding of network properties, such as the centers of connections between layers (the hyper-hubs or ―value wormholes‖) and the shortened distance between nodes (or, the centrality of members) due to such value wormholes. This paper shows that the common practices of adding new links to an existing random graph (e.g., merging FaceBook with other social networking/ecommerce sites) is equivalent to creating a new layer of a hyper-network; and hyper-network analysis promises to reveal otherwise hidden social structures and thereby yield more accurate estimates for average distance and other properties. Estimation formulae are provided for determining the average vertex-vertex distance and average vertex degree. On this basis, the paper proves that hyper-networks enhance ordinary random graphs in these measures, and hence can probably model real-world social networks better than the previous two-dimensional graphs. The paper suggests that all human networks, including social and economical, maybe fundamentally hyper-networks. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=55 The objective of this ongoing research paper is to analyze the performance quality dimensions of a telecom service company supply chain in the Indian context. Currently a rapid boom has been experienced in telecom sectors. While dealing with more and more sophisticated technologies and better change management schemes, one of the crucial problems faced by the top management is the comparative evaluation of various alternatives in the telecom service supply. Current decision makers and researchers witnessed the power of an extended Thomas Saaty’s Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique namely the Analytic Network Process (ANP) as an improved solution for this evaluation problem. ANP model structures the decision problem in a hierarchical form and links the determinants, dimensions, and enablers with alternatives available to the decision maker. In the proposed model, an attempt has been made to examine links of the financial and non-financial, tangible and intangible, internal and external factors, thus providing a holistic framework for the selection of an alternative for the telecom service sector. Therefore in the current study undertaken in a public sector unit in India, the dimensions of telecom service sector were captured in four perspectives viz. customer, internal business, innovation and learning, and finance, which mimic a balanced score card. Three services of the public sector telecom organization that were analyzed are (i) Consultancy (ii) Project Execution (iii) Training and quality control. Here the determinants, dimensions and enablers were derived based on the combination of literature review and insights gained through exploratory interviews with the appropriate experts/ professionals. It was observed that criteria, sub-criteria, determinants, etc. were interrelated. ANP is a powerful multi-criteria decision-making tool to consider interdependencies among and between levels (extension of AHP) of decision attributes. The comparative evaluation between alternatives was done based on the feedback of ten relevant executives. Geometric mean of their response was considered as the combined evaluation score. Later super matrices were formed. Thus, the ANP-based approach for enhancing the performance quality of telecom service proposed in this paper provides a more realistic and accurate representation of the problem. This helps the telecom service providers for periodic monitoring of quality level within their organization. Further, a quantified value named as overall weighted service index, which would give an indication of the performance of an organization and provide directions to managers where the improvement efforts has been derived. This was highest for consultancy and lowest for training and quality control. The article concludes with managerial implication and scope for future work. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=78 Name three service sectors whose costs to customers have exceeded the rate of inflation by more than a factor of three: health care, higher education and some sectors of government. The public is becoming exasperated and involved. Isn’t it time to rethink some of the decades long (and in some cases, centuries long) traditional organizational forms in these heretofore protected sectors? ... http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=61 Why have services grown into the dominant sector of developed economies? Our analysis of secondary data shows that business services make the strongest contribution to the rise of the service sector. We use contributions from three related theories economic theories of the firm to explain the force business services have in shaping firms, industries and economies. Business service providers relieve their clients from the costs of asset ownership (Property Rights Theory), unlock management capacity (Resource-Based View) and support their clients in navigating towards their most valuable business opportunities (Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm). We show how these theories help to build on the non-ownership value provided by business services that result from sound division of labor between organizations. We highlight three areas that call for research and provide opportunities for service science: (1) Systematic design of business-models for fostering service performance, (2) the transformation of high-tech-products into service-hubs, and (3) service-driven innovation and the transformation of R&D into a service sector. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=57 This paper presents a continuous time optimization model for a dynamic pricing and inventory control problem in a dual-channel supply chain system. We consider a manufacturer’s redesign of traditional channel structures, based on customer behaviors, by engaging in direct Internet sales. While the manufacturer and its retailer set optimal pricing and inventory policies dynamically, this study considers both vertical integration and competition of two channels. For the former case, a continuous time optimal control problem is modeled, while for the latter a differential quasi-variational inequality (DQVI) formulation is applied to solve as a Cournot-Nash-Bertrand game. We provide implications for optimal strategies and note the effect of a customer acceptance index. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=73 The author deconstructs the prevailing conceptualization of non-profit marketing and concludes it rests on three principles: voluntary exchange, an open system organization, and self-interest motivation. A review of the genesis of these principles revealed that alternative principles were ignored in the social science literature. Based on a qualitative analysis a revised conceptualization of non-profit marketing was suggested which incorporated the principles of reciprocity, the features of a contingency-choice organization, and altruistic interest motivation. A revised definition of non-profit marketing is offered based on these principles. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=56 A major challenge in service design is the ability to generate useful service concepts for development. New service concepts, however, are often difficult for customers to articulate. In this study we address the idea generation stage of the service development process and suggest the integration of customer scripts to facilitate service concept discovery. We examine the process using data from in-depth laddering interviews with lead users of mobile services across three geographically diverse markets. Results show that the new service concepts generated in this study are applicable in all three markets but usage motivations differ by market. This implies that new service design and developments methods should take account of this and thus we suggest that new method should be developed to meet the industry needs. Our paper proposes one such method. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=51 The intangible and inseparable nature of services is generally thought to increase the risk perceived by consumers when making purchase decisions. This higher level of perceived risk arises because, relative to physical goods, services are characterized by higher levels of experience and credence qualities and lower levels of search qualities. Building brand equity for a service is increasingly recognized as a means of mitigating that risk and creating a strong identity for a service in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The service sector chosen for the empirical research was higher education services in Egypt. In essence, higher education is a professional service characterized by a high level of experience qualities which make the purchase risky and means that branding is important as a source of reassurance to students about the quality of what they will receive. The paper begins with a brief overview of relevant literature and then proceeds to outline the components of brand equity which provide the conceptual framework which guides the research. Subsequently, the empirical work is presented focusing on the comparison between experienced and inexperienced consumers to assess the extent to which corporate brands are able to communicate information about key features of a service. Finally, the results of the survey are discussed and the managerial implications are presented. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=42 Analysis of service quality from the perspective of the customer has generated much attention. The scale most used to develop such studies is the SERVQUAL. This tool has undergone much criticism, mainly focusing on the situational instability shown by the dimensions in certain cases. This work does not reject the proposals of that instrument, but attempts to improve its internal consistency and assess its dimensional structure. To do this, the Enlarged Service Quality Scale (ESQS) has been designed and applied to the university context. The ESQS is mainly characterized by compensating the number of items in all the dimensions, seeking better intra-dimensional consistency. The results confirm the applicability of this scale in non-educational university services, show considerable improvement in its consistency and, further, indicate that the traditional dimensions of SERVQUAL can be reduced and clustered in the macro categories, interactive quality and physical quality. The data also demonstrate the importance of the dimensions related to personalized treatment and interaction in user satisfaction. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=72 As a continuation of a study directed at identifying the similarities and differences between companies that operate in either the Goods or Services Sector of the economy, the authors employ a technique called “Data Surface Mining” (DSM). This simple technique utilizes data previously published in the business press or elsewhere that were gathered for other reasons are further analyzed for a purpose of interest here. As such, data were generated in a recent study conducted by FORBES for the purpose of identifying the world’s 2000 best companies according to the metrics of Sales, Profits, Assets and Market Value. These data were further analyzed and are presented here to ascertain the relative presence of these companies in the two economic sectors, Goods and Services. The understanding of such issues is of critical importance in light of the fact that the Services Sector represents more than 80% (GDP and/or employment) of the United States economy and is of increasing importance in the global economy in both developed and emerging nations. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=35 We seek means of further improving the process of service innovation by providing conceptual framework that would uniformly model information about a service system. Since value co-creation is achieved through knowledge-based interactions, such a framework should be a connection-oriented one. We propose uniform approach to context-sensitive relationships modeling and representation, based on semantic conceptual modeling, suitable for modeling both service system interactions and information about a service system itself. Its application is illustrated on digital libraries domain. The proposed representation may be combined with goal-driven development methods to allow closer interconnection of goals and value proposition. The paper presents application of an original conceptual reference model of service system, which may provide more elaborated background for service innovation process. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=71 This issue of the Journal of Service Science is dedicated to the inferences of system thinking upon recent service research advances, and in particular upon service science and SD logic. The special issue is based upon the scientific proposals deriving from the “2009 Naples Forum on Service”, and specifically to its sessions dedicated to system thinking and its relation to service research (www.naplesforumonservice.it). The forum, held in the island of Capri, Italy, has addressed intriguing issues such as complexity, system thinking, human behavior, vitality, service systems, and in particular was based upon Service Science, Service Dominant logic and network theories. These topics represented the forum pillars since they constitute an attempt in proposing new marketing and management theories in line with the evolution of economic contexts, cultural and behavioral change of customers, globalization of systems and competition, information and communication technology with the Internet and web service, and other changes. ... http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=70 Since Aristotle’s claim that knowledge is derived from the understanding of the whole and not that of the single parts (Aristotle’s Holism), researchers have been struggling with systems and parts in terms of their contents and their relative dynamics. This historic effort evolved during the last century into so-called “systems theory” (Bogdanov, 1922, 1980; von Bertalanffy, 1968, Lazlo 1996; Meadows, 2008). Systems theory is an interdisciplinary theory about every system in nature, in society and in many scientific domains as well as a framework with which we can investigate phenomena from a holistic approach (Capra, 1997). Systems thinking comes from the shift in attention from the part to the whole (Checkland, 1997; Weinberg, 2001; Jackson, 2003), considering the observed reality as an integrated and interacting unicuum of phenomena where the individual properties of the single parts become indistinct. In contrast, the relationships between the parts themselves and the events they produce through their interaction become much more important, with the result that “system elements are rationally connected” (Luhmann, 1990), towards a shared purpose (Golinelli, 2009). The systemic perspective argues that we are not able to fully comprehend a phenomenon simply by breaking it up into elementary parts and then reforming it; we instead need to apply a global vision to underline its functioning. Altough we can start from the analysis of the elementary components of a phenomenon, in order to fully comprehend the phenomenon in its entirety we have to observe it also from a higher level: a holistic perspective (von Bertalanffy, 1968). Systems theory encompasses a wide field of research with different conceptualizations and areas of focus (e.g. Boulding 1956, Maturana and Varela 1975, Senge 1990). Specifically, within management and marketing, a number of authors and scholars have adopted – implicitly or explicitly – a vision of organizations as systems with the aim of analyzing the relationship between organizations and their environment (e.g. Burns and Stalker 1961, Lawrence and Lorsch 1967, Aldrich 1979). The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of systems theories. In particular, focus is given to those that make a specific reference to management. We shall focus on: a) A brief review on multidisciplinary systems theories b) The introduction of basic systems concepts c) The managerial applications of systems thinking This commentary closes the special issue of the Journal of Service Science. It hopes to raise questions, observations and dilemmas in order to foster dialogue about the opportunities and limitations of applying systems theory in management studies and practices. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=69 Service-based industries now dominate the most advanced economies of the world. There is, however, no fully interdisciplinary foundation for research into the development of service, per se. The creation of a service science has been proposed, which would bring into question many traditional assumptions about economics. This paper explores service as a science, and proposes that the biological concept of mutualism be used as one aspect for developing a foundation of service science. It then considers the implications for individual organizations, in terms of viable systems. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=34 Purpose: This conceptual paper will explore the application of an aspect of systems theory, the Law of Requisite Variety (LRV) to service organisations. Design / methodology / approach: The notion of a system has a strong history in management; in searching for theory to provide substance to service systems research the concept can provide valuable insights. Systems theory and thinking is the study of complex adaptive wholes; the focus is on the whole rather than the parts. The LRV, introduced by Ashby, concerns the behaviour of systems. The LRV states that the organisation must be able to deal with the variety introduced by the external environment, in order to remain viable. Understanding the nature of customer variety and how to deal with it is important for service organisations since variety provides both a challenge and an opportunity. This paper seeks to explore and operationalise variety in a service context. Findings: A new service systems model is proposed building on the LRV, systems concepts and on current developments in service classification. Originality / value: To further the use of systems thinking in service science and to explore how the LRV could be applied in this context. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=67 Purpose: In this paper we develop a resource allocation model for a service system. The uncertainty of the relationship between inputs and outputs of a process of co-creation of value by a service provider and a service recipient is modeled with a stochastic form of the technology function of each service process of the system. The model development is directed at providing useful policy prescription for service providers and a foundation for research into the nature of resource allocation policies in service industries. Design/methodology/approach: The model development makes use of concepts of probability theory, optimization theory and extant DEA models. Findings: A practical optimization for allocating resources to service processes as well as insights into the complexity of service resource management are obtained. Research limitations/implications: The model presented in this paper is based on constant returns to scale of the service process. Nonlinear technology functions will be the subject of future research. Originality/value: To date, service science lacks models for resource management that approach the usefulness of resource-management models for manufacturing enterprises even though the service economy in the industrialized world is larger than the manufacturing economy. This paper initiates a stream of model-building research. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=66 This paper proposes a system science restructuring of today’s management practices. The paper discusses what we have learned from system science that gives us a new and different understanding of what the company is, and how it works; and a new way of understanding the world outside the company where company success is created. System science restructures management practices at a new level of understanding; structuring the company to achieve its purpose, and changing and very much improving the way the company is managed. Stafford Beer’s viable system model is a useful model for this restructuring. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=65 The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the new opportunities that the Viable Systems Approach (VSA) can provide for observing complex service systems and explaining social phenomena through general schemes of interpretation. At the same time, it explores methodological links with the Service Science (SS) approach in order to propose (VSA)’s contribution to moulding a unified vision of complex objects of analysis, and to evidence the many converging elements that emerge from the two perspectives as well as the benefits that derive from different interpretation schemes. In particular, in our paper we analyze healthcare service complexity in a relational perspective, using a VSA-SS conceptual framework to interpret the emergent systems instability in the Italian Health Service. The application of principles and concepts proper to the (VSA) and the SS approaches to articulated service structures, such as healthcare, identifies critical features and interesting new “therapeutic” prospects for healthcare service systems in order to guarantee their viability. The paper proposes an innovative methodological basis for evaluating the level of appropriateness of the healthcare service and, at the same time, evidences the need for achieving a balanced triple target of efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability (EES) in healthcare service systems governance. As a result, a new area of cross fertilization for collaborative research emerges. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=64 The objective of this paper is to review recent developments in service theory and systems theory with a view to identifying common features between the two. In particular, the study explores the issue of whether so-called ‘smart service systems’ can be understood in terms of the ‘viable systems approach’ of systems theory. The paper begins with a review of recent developments in service theory by examining the fundamental principles of service-dominant logic (S-D logic) and service science (SS). The similarities and differences of the two are explored, with particular emphasis on the common feature of the service system. The study then moves to the realm of systems theory by exploring the main proposals of the viable systems approach (VSA), which is an interdisciplinary systems theory that includes elements derived from resource-based theory, biology, sociology, and mechanics. The paper then draws together service theory and systems theory by examining whether ‘smart service systems’ can be best understood in terms of ‘viable service systems’. The most important finding of the study is that the VSA provides valuable insights into the design and management of smart service systems, especially with regard to harmonisation, systems governance, and successful value co-creation processes. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=63 This paper presents a first attempt at an integrated Service Science (SS) and Viable Systems Approach (VSA) analysis of the real-world phenomenon of changing jobs roles. Changing job roles is important to quality of life and yet understudied by systems scientists. Today, individuals changing jobs multiple times during their working life is the norm. The average person born in the later years of the US baby boom held 10.8 jobs from age 18 to age 42 (BLS 2008). The viability of societal systems depends on both entities changing job roles offered and individuals changing job roles filled (Spohrer and Maglio 2010b). Societal systems interact with their environment via individuals in job roles, and the behaviors and dynamics of these diverse types of viable systems are not easy to explain and predict (Beer 1972). Both Service Science (SS) and Viable Systems Approach (VSA) can be seen as less well known specializations of General Systems Theory (von Bertalanffy 1968, Spohrer and Kwan 2009, Barile 2009, Golinelli 2010). Like General Systems Theory, these emerging analytic frameworks advocate a worldview and specialized vocabulary that provide a framework for analysis and decision making. Also, these nascent analytic frameworks aim to improve our understanding of complex systems and improve their design. By refining the concept of the identity of a system from SS and VSA perspectives, the contributions of this paper include providing an abstract framework for enumerating all job roles and transitions between job roles as well as a practical recommendation to prepare a next-generation of individuals to compete better in a world of accelerating job role change. Specifically, our analysis of changing job roles will result in a recommendation for increasing the ratio of T-Shaped Professionals (T-SP possess both broad communication skills and deep problem solving skills) to I-Shaped Professional (I-SP possess only deep problem solving skills) in the labor force of nations and businesses to improve their viability in a complex environment of accelerating change (Donofrio et al. 2010). http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=46 Most executives want good service but are constrained by their assumptions about the causes of bad service and the barriers and costs of improvement. Many of these assumptions are dead wrong. The minute management starts questioning their assumptions and asking questions, the logjam can be broken and innovation and improvement ensue. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=45 Decisions in service operations are complex since they involve various interdependent decision-makers agents) at different hierarchical levels, ranging from customer representatives over account managers to top executives. We formulate a three-level maintenance service problem as a stochastic decision-making model, with an account manager, supervisor, and worker at each of the three levels. The proposed incentive mechanism aligns the interests of lower level agents with the goals of the top agent. The agents’ strategic interactions are analyzed game-theoretically and results show that a Pareto-efficient Nash equilibrium can be attained given certain organizational properties. Furthermore, we show that local information can be sufficient for organization-wide optimal decisions. In a final step, the three-level model is generalized for multi-level, i.e., multi-organizational-scale, systems. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=41 The continuous growth of health care services expenses urges U.S. government to take actions. The adoption of Information Technology, and especially RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) allow hospitals to re-engineer their processes in order to reduce costs, maintaining the same level of service to the patients. Information technology represents a core element of the service itself; therefore a scientific driven service design approach is believed to improve the adoption rate of RFID in hospitals. The main goal of the present study is to propose an RFID based service platform for hospitals, which is consistent with a service science driven design approach. A survey of 33 California based hospitals has been used to identify the user requirements of the hospitals. Later, a business process re-engineering for hospitals is proposed. Firstly the different actors involved in the health care services, along with their relationships in terms of information flows, are identified. This leads us to identify the various operations in a hospital setting that have a potential to be streamlined by introducing RFID technology. Having introduced these operations, we theorize a customizable RFID service, which can be implemented sequentially by each hospital according to its individual conditions such that it suits them most. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=40 Education is a service industry comprising 10 percent of the US GDP, second only to health care at 17 percent. In the U.S. and over much of the world, classroom education remains a labor-intensive craft profession, essentially unchanged since the 19th Century... In summary, there are important stirrings in education, the World’s most important service sector. These go far beyond the ‘time and motion’ improvements of typical IE/OR studies and can extend into the classroom and into the learning process in new and transformational ways. But there remains much to be done. We hope that you find time to join the effort! http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=39 Contemporary information systems (IS) products and services must fulfill the needs of consumers that are more widely scattered than traditional organizational end-users. New ways to incorporate these wide-audience end-users in the IS development are required. The lead-user method used in new product development is a promising approach to tackle this problem. However, the finding and recruiting of the lead-users has been found very burdensome for the firms. We propose lead-users to be found and recruited from virtual communities. This paper provides a conceptual framework that makes use of the Internet’s possibilities – not only in recruiting the lead users - but also when collaborating with them utilizing distributed Group Support Systems. Finally, we report on our preliminary field tests, discuss the implications of our work and conclude. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=38 Cloud software service is a modality for providing computer facilities and deploying software via the Internet. The concept combines Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Cloud computing represents a contextual shift in how computers are provisioned and accessed. Software-as-a-service is an architectural continuum that represents a democratization of access to software, computing platforms, and data through network effects, and the monetization of its value to customers and end users. One of the defining characteristics of cloud software service is the transfer of control from the client domain to the service provider. Another is that the client benefits from economy of scale on the part of the provider. There are many different examples of cloud software service, and this paper seeks to combine the salient elements into a composite picture of the subject matter. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=37 We introduce the concept of structural analysis of a business enterprise. The practice of enterprise structural analysis amounts to the construction of an enterprise model using business entities defined in an enterprise ontology or enterprise architecture and creating specific views of the enterprise based on relationships among the entities. As we demonstrate through a simple yet illustrative example of a hypothetical coffee shop business, these views can provide many insights and points of analysis. Structural analysis provides an interactive, analytical environment for a user to view an enterprise from multiple perspectives, an approach not unlike On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) but for analyzing the qualitative or structural aspects of the enterprise. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=33 In a recent article in this Journal, S. Vargo, the service-dominant logic theorist, makes the unarguable claim that “What is needed is a true science of service (Vargo and Akaka, Service Science, 2009, p. 39, emphasis in original). To constitute a true science of service, services research must use valid measures. The sine qua non requirement for a valid measure is content validity, which comprises item-content validity and answer-scale validity (see Rossiter, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2002, and C-OAR-SE Construct Measurement for the Social Sciences, Springer, forthcoming). The present article begins by criticizing the content validity of E-S-QUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Malhotra 2005), the principal academic measure of e-retailer service quality, which is probably the most important construct in contemporary services research. Rossiter’s (2002) C-OAR-SE construct measurement theory is then applied to develop a new and more valid measure, called ER-SERVCOMPSQUAL. This new measure seeks potential customers’ and current customers’ judgments about the quality of the components of e-retail service (thus ensuring high item-content validity), which are rated in terms of behavioral answer categories (which have high answer-scale validity). The new measure clearly shows e-retail managers where to make improvements in their service quality. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=32 The shift in many industrial economies from manufacturing to service may have implications for the extant understanding of value creation. Service-dominant logic (SDL) poses a new paradigm for understanding the basis of economic exchange and argues that service is a true basis for understanding value creation. This service-centered perspective, as opposed to a goods-centered perspective, argues that market exchange actually is the process of parties using their specialized operant knowledge for mutual benefit, and focuses on how providers and customers interact, in order to co-create value. Using the SDL paradigm, this paper examines service-oriented entrepreneurship, where new business opportunities can be identified from the value co-creation perspective that may have been otherwise unnoticed by the goods-centered view. Propositions are developed using literature on SDL and entrepreneurship. Next, secondary cases from four companies are offered which support linkages between SDL and: (1) the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities, (2) a lifetime view of products/services, (3) redefining the role of the customer, (4) the alignment of information and goals between firms and their customers, and (5) the dynamic recombination of actors in the value creation system. Finally, the paper includes discussion and conclusion sections. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=31 We present an open systems model that describes the processes and systems whose cumulative effects shape the human side of service delivery. The human side of service delivery, we believe, has received less attention in the service science literature than the more technical side. The open systems view of consumer service organizations focuses on input, throughput, and output stages. The creation and maintenance of a service climate is the key issue for throughput management practices in the model, such climate being partially dependent on employee and customer attributes as input and in turn linking to the output of the firm in the form of customer satisfaction and profits. A shared service climate across the subsystems of organizations—all subsystems (e.g., information technology, finance, HR, marketing) for all organizational members regardless of rank or position (e.g., executives, front-line supervisors, staff who serve service delivery people, and service delivery people themselves) is seen as the key to managing the complexities of the human side of service delivery if the firm is to be competitive in the marketplace. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=30 Customers deserve better service than most service organizations are prepared or willing to provide them. This article describes the historical trends leading relentlessly to liberating service customers. The 21st century is portrayed as the customer century where respecting and trusting customers, serving the unserved and under served, and improving overall service levels become paramount. The implications for customer co-creation are explored. Technology enabled customer co-creation is also examined. Finally, the customer perspective is presented as the appropriate and necessary perspective for the service sector to adopt as customers are liberated or they liberate themselves. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=28 An interactive method for service design has been proposed for service that heavily depends on human expertise and human performance. In this method a simulation model of the service process is to be constructed based on ethnographic field observation, and then the model is to be validated by showing simulation results to field experts in a visualized form. In the course of proposing and assessing design plans, opinions are repeatedly acquired from field experts by showing simulation results. Their expertise can be reflected in the final design plan through such an interactive design process. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed design method, the method was applied to ground aircraft operations at a large airport. A simulation model of the service process at the Tokyo International (Haneda) Airport was constructed, and it was demonstrated that the simulation could well replicate observed data on ground aircraft operations. It was also shown that the proposed design method is useful to create new design plans for ground aircraft operations and comparatively assess them for improving service performance. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=27 This article focuses on analysis of the human aspect in service systems and investigates the role of creativity in enhancing service innovation. Applying the creative cognition approach, a conceptual framework of creative process for service development is constructed to demonstrate the general process of designing creative services, with the emphasis on consumer satisfaction and business success. Five strategies are proposed to facilitate creative service generation: abstraction and multi-perspective, conceptual expansion, conceptual combination, analogical thinking, and meta-design. Concrete examples are provided to illustrate the application of the general creative service design process and the proposed strategies. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=24 Success of services businesses depend on how well the workforce is managed. Having the right size of workforce and the right skill set of the workforce at the right time under dynamic demand environments are challenges that many service businesses face. Demand disturbances in services businesses are typically managed by adjusting the resource levels such as acquiring additional resources from larger pool (borrowing resources from the corporate levels for departmental level needs), and releasing resources back to the larger pool for transferring and cross training of the workforce. However, the resource adjustments for changing the level of workforce are not as easy as acquiring or scraping materials as in manufacturing supply chain. Ineffective policies of the resource adjustment can produce undesirable effects such as oscillation between acquisition and release of workforce, and amplified oscillation through the stages of the service processes. In this work, we attempt to apply control theoretic principles in managing resources to see how various feedback control schemes can improve costs, utilization and stability of workforce. Our study indicates that effective combination of multiple feedback control schemes can produce desirable policies of workforce resource management. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=20 In order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the market place, many organisations have sought to become more agile and flexible. One potential route to increased flexibility is home working. In a services dominant world what is less well considered, however, is the impact of such flexible work practices on co-workers, partners and customers. Some of the human resource management literature provides a positive stance, where both employee and employer benefit from home working arrangements, whereas as other studies have challenged and questioned the practice and suggest that the benefits of home working have been overstated. This paper draws on results of a case study investigation to appraise, for the various stakeholders, the benefits and costs of homeworking. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=19 Service science is a big umbrella under which many new and traditional results can find their comfortable places... Connected, interdependent value cocreation is networking: the dynamic multiple connections of people, organizations, resources, and institutions as service systems which may scale down to persons, up to the whole economy, and transformational to new production functions and value chains. If we understand this networking, then we may be able to see through the business strategies and system design laws that optimize connected value cocreation. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=17 Emmanuel Fragnière, a Professor at Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève, shows in this editorial column that the Taylor organizational model, which originated in the industrial world, no longer has a place in today’s service sector. In fact, the modern service sector is actually less standardized, and has begun to incorporate specific expertise and skills more and more heavily. This evolution supposes a different organizational model that relies more on creativity and on “implicit knowledge, ” which is the essence of expertise. This new organizational model, which is starting to be sketched out in certain larger service enterprises, has yet to be fully created. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=16 Abstract -- Service is broadly considered as an application of specialized knowledge, skill, and experience, performed for co-creation of respective values of both consumer and provider. Services are engineered and delivered through a heterogeneous service system. Compared to physical goods in manufacturing, resources, largely people (end users as the service consumer and employees as the service provider) - the main focus of a service system, cannot be held and are more complex to model and manage as people participating in service production and consumption have physiological and psychological issues, cognitive capability, and sociological constraints, etc. As the world becomes more complex and uncertain socially and economically, this research proposes a computational thinking approach to modeling of the dynamics and adaptiveness of a service system, aimed at fully leveraging today’s ubiquitous digitalized information, computing capability and computational power so that the service system can be studied qualitatively and quantitatively. Ultimately, with this foundation we will successively and successfully develop the following mechanisms to implement and enhance service systems: • A mechanism to timely capture end users’ requirements, changes, expectation and satisfaction in a variety of technical, social, and cultural aspects; • A mechanism to efficiently and cost-effectively provide employees right means and assistances to engineer services while promptly responding the changes; • A mechanism to allow involved people consciously infuse as much intelligence as possible into all levels and aspects of decision-making to assure necessary system adaptiveness for smarter operations. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=14 Abstract -- Service science is an emerging discipline concerned with the evolution, interaction, and reciprocal cocreation of value among service systems. Service-dominant (S-D) logic is an alternative to the traditional, goods-dominant (G-D) paradigm for understanding economic exchange and value creation. This service-centered view is based on the idea that service – the application of competences for the benefit of another – is the basis of all exchange. S-D logic has been identified as an appropriate philosophical foundation for the development of service science. However, perhaps partly because S-D logic is first necessarily encountered through the G-D logic paradigm to which it runs counter, it is sometimes misinterpreted and thus misrepresented. This paper discusses S-D logic as a foundation for service science by reviewing the foundational premises of S-D logic and clarifying several misinterpretations related to 1) the S-D logic meaning of “service”, 2) the idea that all economies are service economies, and 3) the nature of value cocreation. Drawing on these clarifications, implications of an S-D logic foundation for service science are proposed. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=13 Abstract -- The Energy Box is proposed as a 24/7 background processor operating on a local computer or in a remote location, silently managing one’s home or small business electrical energy usage hour-by-hour and even minute-by-minute. It operates best in an environment of demand-sensitive real-time pricing, now made feasible via ‘smart grid’ technology. We assume that, in time, virtually every electrical device in a home or small business will be controllable from the Energy Box. There are multiple motivations for an Energy Box: (1) By delaying or pushing forward various uses of electricity (e.g. space conditioning), widespread use of the Energy Box could ‘shave the peaks and fill in the valleys of demand,’ thereby reducing the need for capacity expansion in electrical power generation and distribution; (2) The system should result in reduced electrical energy costs to the consumer; (3) The system supports local generation, storage and sale of electricity back to the grid; (4) The system supports graceful reductions in power consumption by allowing voluntary partial load shedding as requested by the electrical utility during times of extreme high demand; (5) Requiring numerous minute-by-minute decisions over the course of a day, the system alleviates the home owner or small business manager from making such decisions, each only involving pennies but in the aggregate involving significant dollars. The primary integrating method of optimization and control is stochastic dynamic programming. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=11 Abstract -- Service scaling is concerned with service productivity, and hyper-networks with the design of service scaling. This new model uniquely explains Internet-based economic activities, such as e-commerce/e-business and social networking, which are quintessential new genres of service for Knowledge Economy. These activities possess unprecedented promises for scaling: up (reaching the population), down (personalization), and transformational (new business designs). The concept of hyper-networks has been proposed recently by one of the authors to help explain the analytical nature of such scaling. It establishes the principle of designing multiple simultaneous layers of digital connections (networking) of persons and organizations on the same basic networks (e.g., the Internet), and interrelating them through “value worm holes” to inflate value propositions (business spaces) and enable massive, simultaneous value cocreations across the life cycles of persons and organizations. This paper further analyzes the mathematical properties of hyper-networks in the context of a person’s multiple roles in his/her life cycle, where each role sparks a particular network. Agent-based simulation experiments confirm that multi-layered networking (e.g., simultaneous multiple social networks) decreases exponentially the degrees of separation, and thereby increases the possibility for value proposition and cocreation in the community. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=9 Abstract -- Facility Network Transformation (FNT) is a strategic approach involving assessing and optimizing the industrial facility networks such as new site selection, demand forecasting, performance evaluation in those customer oriented service industries, e.g. banking, retail, etc. In practice, FNT requirements are often diverse, dynamic and industry specific, it\'s often difficult to implement a generic FNT service fully integrated with legacy systems. The heterogeneity of spatial information further calls for a loosely coupled architecture. An innovative spatial decision support system, iFAO (Intelligent Facility Network Analytics and Optimization), is therefore developed based on Service Oriented Architecture for FNT problems. In this paper, key FNT service patterns are identified and modeled to develop an industrial independent solution, and an SOA-based framework for iFAO is proposed correspondingly. An underlying data model design is also elaborated which acts as a common language for experts from different domains to communicate and help speed up the solution development. With a real implementation case in retail, it\'s illustrated how the SOA based iFAO services are integrated to solve the real industrial problems, especially for quick decisions on business strategy in the competitive and ever-changing marketplaces. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=8 Abstract -- As part of an ongoing study of the similarities and differences between the Goods and Services Sectors of the economy, a technique labelled “Data Surface Mining” (DSM) was used to analyze three independently generated and previously published data sets that focused on three different aspects of human resources. The three aspects are: in which economic sector to launch a career (young people), the relative presence of powerful women in the two sectors (women) and the relative presence of seniors in top positions in the two sectors (aging). Such matters are of major managerial significance in light of the fact that the Services Sector represents 80% (GDP and/or employment) of the United States economy and is of increasing importance in the global economy. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=7 It becomes essential for us to develop a revolutionary science capable of helping enterprises invest effectively to capitalize on a competitive and adaptable configuration of service systems under uncertain circumstance, aimed at accordingly realizing more predicable outcomes in a smart, efficient, and cost-effective way. Apparently, as the world is getting better instrumented and interconnected, and more intelligent, it is of a great need for service systems to be studied using computational thinking, resulting in the creation and development of service science with the potential of much broader applicability. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=4 Abstract -- This study investigates the possible spillover effects of customer satisfaction from product manufacturer to service provider, and vice versa. The survey results provide empirical evidence for the presence of spillover effects of quality and customer satisfactions in the mobile phone industry. This finding suggests that research on the ways in which quality affects customer satisfaction and loyalty should consider the influence of partnering firms and suppliers, rather than only examine the relationship within the same organization. This is particularly relevant in settings where the simultaneous presence of physical product and the service are needed. In the mobile phone industry, handset manufacturers and network operators need to consider whom they partner, depending whether they are the likely receiving or giving party of the spillover effects. Moreover, these effects are moderated by product image gap between the handset and network operator. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=3 Abstract -- We have conducted survey research to measure the perception of the Genevese population regarding the problem of information overload. The sample size is 581. Main findings indicate that information overload is a real concern in Geneva and seems to affect the efficiency of companies. Themes like sources and mediums of communications, utility of information, information pollution are investigated. In the first part of the analysis, we propose descriptive statistics. In the second part we explore a few hypotheses that are tested. http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=2 As the nations, businesses, non-profits, and people of the world become more interdependent, value creation and conflict resolution mechanisms, both historically evolved and consciously designed, are becoming more diverse, complex, and unfortunately, more susceptible to cascade failures and the law of unintended consequences. Service science is emerging as the study of value-cocreation phenomena in a globally integrated and connected world, which has the potential to become significantly smarter and more sustainable. In a service world, diverse entities create, abandon, utilize, ignore, configure, reconfigure, specialize, integrate, protect, and share resources and relationships to cocreate benefits with and for each other, both as individuals and collectives, both for the short-term and the long-term. ... http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/paper_details.php?id=1 Service cannot be held, and is typically intangible, perishable, difficult to port, hard to measure, and co-produced with customers. This paper introduces a new thinking of design and deployment of competent and competitive service systems by taking account of these service’s unique characteristics. It aims to help promote and advance Service Science that ultimately will empower enterprise service systems and make them highly adaptable and sustainable to the global, changing, and dynamic service environment (when, where and who to deliver and whom to be served, etc.) to meet the severe competition challenges.