Service Science for Socio‐Economical and Information System Advancement: Holistic Methodologies

Citation

Lara, F.J. (2011), "Service Science for Socio‐Economical and Information System Advancement: Holistic Methodologies", Management Decision, Vol. 49 No. 3, pp. 489-492. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741111120824

Holistic approach to the Service Science

This book aspires to shed light on the phenomenon of services from different perspectives, thus linking several matters that we tend to think as of belonging to different disciplines though there is a unifying element in all of them. But with a particular and different approach as the professional and in job training focus, because of the large professional experience of the author in the research, the business software and the IT consultancy in general, with different types and levels of service practicing styles and cultures.

The book is organized in 11 chapters; the first of them is about “Service Science and Practice”. This introductory chapter aims to make clear the holistic nature of service linking the science part to the practice matters. Bringing examples for service successes and failures, this chapter shall help the reader position her or himself with the field under examination. Present and discuss the collaborative approach towards service design and the contextualization of services as leverage for attaining competitive advantage. Critical factors are listed that concern relationship management in business service context and which are considered in terms of the collaboration dimension. The chapter closes with an examination of power dependencies and trust in collaborative service arrangements. Of course, here the references of Arando et al. (2009), Claver‐Cortés et al. (2009) or Fuller‐Love (2009) are compulsories.

The second chapter, “About the Nature of Services”, is much more familiar for me. Talking about the intangible nature of services and how it materializes to tangible commodities and results. The aim of this chapter is to increase the awareness of the reader regarding the complexities related to even simple forms of services that we regard as trivial. Five propositions are presented upon which the proposed service development framework and the underlying processes are built; all five of them are also related with corresponding problem areas in the real world and the markets. Two sections are devoted respectively to the nowadays more increasingly and intensively faced step changes in the conceptualisation of services and the e‐Services iceberg. It is interesting to read Barrutia et al. (2009).

The next step is the “Typology of Services” as the third chapter. Classes and taxonomies of services are described in detail. How can they be categorized? Why some of them matter and some other doesn't? The major part of the chapter is justly devoted to the presentation of the Service Analysis Model (SAM). With its four constituent building blocks, SAM provides an insight to the analysis of services and is followed by a section devoted to the synthesis of service and the composition of new ones. The chapter closes with the presentation of a real test case implemented for a manufacturing company to improve their service supply chain.

Fourth, “Service and the Humans” examine various aspects of influence and impact that services have on the humans and vice versa. How an interactive space is created to link both entities – and most importantly – how humans interact with each other through services of all kinds. The author examines the starting point of a real world service design and implementation case that is representative of the difficulties that one faces when trying to make practice out of theory. And continue examining the users and their particular needs, then looking inside the service mediation process and the various user service scenarios. Conclude with a description of system deployment issues. Here there is no references, but there is endnotes, and it is very interesting the used of the dilemma method. Here references as Browning et al. (2009), Ekinci and Dawes (2009), Karatepe and Kilic (2009), Peris‐Ortiz (2009), Thach and Kidwell (2009), Valle and Castillo (2009), and Yang (2009) are fundamental for this topic.

The Chapter five is about “Service and the Computers”. Here the core subject is the relationships between services and their implementations in computer applications and information systems. A theoretical part of the service development framework is presented related with Information Supply Chains and is followed by an implemented test case for manufacturing enterprise. Important part is devoted to practical concerns like configurability of a service in other or new contexts and de novo construction of a service supply chain (Hui and Wan, 2009; Sigala, 2009; Yousafzai et al., 2009).

With the following chapter, “Service and the Workplace” different questions are presented to the reader: How our workplaces are formed and shaped with respect to our conceptualization and understanding of services? How organizations can be characterized, affected and market through their idea of services? Workplace is considered as open learning factory (Petkova, 2009; Warren et al., 2009), open to the communities they belong to, to the markets they operate for and to the employees, customers and contractors of all types they interact with. How can all the new learning items be capitalised and transformed into knowledge assets for the companies and the employees? It is one of the chapters with more references and endnotes with the knowledge creating company.

By other hand, in the next chapter, “Service Economics”, the author examines the economies of services as well as matters related to service economics, with the following questions: Do the same or similar laws that drive the other fields of the non‐service economy also govern the service‐based economy as well? How can wealth matters be addressed in the services field with application of well‐know economics patterns? An improved accounting method for project management accounting is presented based on the idea of value centres next to the well‐known concepts of cost centres and profit centres. The method can be of direct use for value based management purposes that is of central importance for all service‐related activities. A focus of intellectual capital approach is observed during this entire chapter.

The eighth chapter “Service Physics” aims towards user‐centred service design. A core issue to the design of “ergonomically correct” service interface is their appropriateness with respect to the particular human user behaviour attributes, as they evolve during the utilization of an interactive service and its constituent applications. The exploitation of human behaviour aspects in the service interaction techniques design process is of significant interest and is presented in this chapter. In many cases, for the same audience a service implementation needs to be differentiated from other similar services, while in certain other cases this is not part of the recommended actions (Cater and Cater, 2009; Luoh and Tsaur, 2009; Papazissimou and Georgopoulos, 2009; Tsai and Lee, 2009). Very completed and detailed references are cited in this chapter in particular related to “ergonomic” issues.

“Service Metaphysics” is the title of the chapter nine. Transcendental matters of services like communities of users, service idealism, theological and existentialist perspectives on services are topics of this chapter. This is the most philosophical part of the entire book though it is of straight utility for its linkage to many service business and management topics. Furthermore, in this chapter the author present a methodology that helps for the valuations of intangible assets like services.

The following chapter “Culture of Service” (Hechavarria and Reynolds, 2009; Zutshi and Tan, 2009) is about questions like: How do all different types of services affect the reality and routine of the service consumer or user? What cultural effects can we recognize to the community or the individuals? What are the cultural aspects of any newly introduced service? And how these can positively or negatively affect the society at large? In this chapter the author presents results of a research exercise related with the building of services for a collaborative community environment for experiential learning in medical emergencies. Extensive use of the Living Labs methodology has been made and is reported and related with the presented framework. The final part of this chapter is devoted to configurations aspects of the collaborative service environment. International references are cited in this chapter with several endnotes.

The last chapter, “Future of Services” is like the conclusion of the book. The author talks about the dominance of services in our world and the challenges that the society and the individuals are facing. About the emergence of the “Service Science” as an independent discipline that will be taught, studied research and applied. Propose a formulation of the scientific foundations for Service Science. The role of history and arts, and the inrush of humanities in the service domain, is another topic that the author introduces as a future line of work into the Service Science.

On the whole, I enjoyed reading the different chapters for two main reasons, which I also consider the major strengths of this volume: the knowledgeable overview of the conceptual and methodological contributions that service science could make to the business science as a whole; and the discussion of a whole range of new and exciting new questions. The book can contributed to our understanding of what constitutes Service Science for Socio‐Economical and Information Systems Advancement, from a holistic perspective and methodology. To sum up: this is a excellent volume for all of us involved and interested in the debate on how to bring relevance to the Service Science, and Service Studies.