Service Science

Processes are carried out various activities in a logical sequence in order to produce a good or service that has value to a specific group of customers. In a systemic view of organizations, highlights the business processes that are supported by organizational and managerial processes, whose goal is to create value. Within the range of processes that occur within firms, this study focused on the process of creating new services, the New Service Development (NSD). In this context, the research highlight the problem associated with the performance of these processes, and these may be impacted, or not by the use of knowledge in part or in whole process, the loss and / or forgetfulness, or use knowledge that does not add value for the company, its customers consequently. To achieve the objective of this work on improving the process of developing new services in order to eliminate waste of knowledge, raised the main concepts on the themes: value and waste of knowledge, development of new services, as well as the models proposed by literature for the development of these, identifying the waste of knowledge and their possible causes and indicating possible solutions. To eliminate, these study proposes a systematic to eliminate waste of knowledge, which may occur in the process of developing new services. The systematic comprises the following steps: mapping the current state of the process of creating new services, to relate the process mapped to the phases of the reference NSD process, identifies symptoms and waste associated with the symptoms and causes waste of knowledge and proposes improvements identified in NSD process. The systematic proposed contributes by providing a driver to improve the process of NSD, creating all the necessary ingredients to provide improvement, by the way it organizes into steps to identify: symptoms, waste of knowledge and their possible causes, then, to propose improvements to the process. The systematic also provides a better understanding of knowledge management itself, bringing forth a new vision: the quest to eliminate the waste of knowledge.

The purpose of this study was to develop the yet limited empirical knowledge on the intensity of customer interaction and on specific customer roles in service innovation processes. An empirical study of twelve (12) business service innovation projects was conducted in cleaning and security, financial, and ICT services. We examined both ad hoc and formalised innovation processes. Overall in these service sectors, which offer support services to their customers, direct customer interaction in service development can be characterised as being limited and focused on specific, well-defined tasks. In the analysis, three highly important customer roles emerged: 1. Customers act as catalysts of service development processes. 2. Customer feedback is often decisive in nature, allowing for go/kill decisions and directing other key decisions. 3. Customers have a key role in internal marketing of the new service idea within the provider organisation. We outline a set of questions relating to kn...

A conceptual architecture for ambient assisted living is introduced as a contribution to the development of an ecosystem of products and services supporting active ageing. In order to facilitate understanding and better interrelate concepts, a 3-layered model is adopted: Infrastructure layer, Care and assistance services layer, and AAL ecosystem layer. A holistic perspective of ambient assisted living, namely considering four important life settings is adopted: (i) Independent living; (ii) Health and care in life; (iii) Occupation in life; and (iv) Recreation in life.

Today the airline industry is one of the fastest and largest growing industries in the world because of its importance in facilitating national and international relation among st countries, Tangibles, Reliability, Competence, Responsiveness, and Empathy are the core characteristics of service industry.In line with the international standard parameters the study which to recommend to the airline industry to enhance the level of customer satisfaction, customer royalty and customer retention in the industry by providing safety of their life and property, restore full confidence on their quality of service delivery and delight their existing customers in order to attract potential customers.

standard per la misurazione della performance della biblioteca si integra efficacemente in una strategia di marketing, in particolare per quanto concerne le attività di pianificazione, controllo e comunicazione. Vediamo una definizione di marketing: "Il marketing è una filosofia pervasiva della gestione aziendale orientata al mercato, perché implica la focalizzazione dell'interesse alle esigenze della clientela in tutte le funzioni aziendali". 1 Questa è solo una possibile definizione di marketing, termine al quale vengono dati significati diversi. A variare è soprattutto l'ampiezza semantica: spesso la sua valenza è minimizzata e in pratica equivale a promozione. Il termine usato correttamente sta in realtà a indicare le operazioni di analisi, pianificazione e controllo, o, più ampiamente, le tecniche e le strategie cui ricorrere per individuare i bisogni dei clienti, fino a includere quasi tutti gli elementi del management: leadership, mission, pianificazione, modalità di vendita/erogazione dei beni/servizi, performance, valutazione della performance. 2 Per noi, il marketing è un atteggiamento di orientamento all'utente che informa di sé in modo complessivo tutto l'operare della biblioteca. Così inteso il concetto tende a sfumare ed evolversi in quello di Total quality management. La gestione orientata al marketing prende le mosse dai bisogni del mercato. Il marketing è nato nell'ambito delle imprese produttrici di beni nel momento in cui per la contrazione della domanda e l'incremento della concorrenza l'elemento premiante è diventato la capacità di ascoltare il mercato, di interpretarne i bisogni e le motivazioni che ne stanno alla base. A partire dagli anni Settanta si parla di orientamento al marketing anche per le imprese di pubblici servizi e dunque anche per le biblioteche. E' un passaggio giustificato? Sì, essenzialmente per due motivi: da una parte il marketing è uno strumento adeguato per agire con efficacia nei confronti dei mercati obiettivo perché consente di usare in modo ottimale le risorse a disposizione, dall'altra il marketing, fondato come deve essere su un'approfondita conoscenza degli utenti con le loro motivazioni e i loro bisogni, aiuta a scongiurare il rischio di agire in modo miope o presuntuoso nei confronti di un'utenza della quale si suppone sbagliando di conoscere i bisogni. Ecco perché definire l'entità utente è il primo passo da compiere nella costruzione di qualunque strategia di marketing. Ma definire tale entità sulla base della propria mission è anche il primo passo da compiere nell'applicazione di uno standard per la misurazione della performance. In un'ottica di marketing, l'esistenza di un mercato obiettivo e l'orientamento al mercato impongono che si fissino: • piani e programmi;

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and characterise the notion of shared resources in service systems. Such resources are shared by the provider and the consumer during the execution of a service. Based on three studies, we identify two types of shared resources in service systems. The three studies were performed in the health care sector, the consultancy sector and in a library. The empirical method was based on a combination of qualitative interviews, observation and participation. The two types of resources are called shared target and shared support. Shared target is a well known type of shared resources. Shared support is a new type of shared resources. The two types of shared resouces can be used to support co-creation in service executions.

In the hospitality industry, success is often associated with luxury facilities, beautiful architecture, and strategic locations. Yet, many studies and real-world practices show that these factors alone are not enough to guarantee guest satisfaction. What truly sets successful hotels apart is something less visible but deeply impactful: the quality of employee communication. Guests may forget the design of the lobby, but they will always remember how they were treated, greeted, and listened to by hotel staff.

Cloud services (CCS) are a crucial element in the service sector, but there are still challenges left in their design, implementation, operation and dismissal, due to issues such as the integration of physical and technical components, interaction of social and technical aspects, dynamic and elastic reconfiguration. In modelling service systems, ontologies have been recognized as a useful instrument for reducing conceptual ambiguities and inconsistencies. However, none of the general approaches proposed in literature have addressed the specific aspects of CCS. In this perspective, we explore how the UFO-S core ontology can be used to describe IT services and, in particular, CCS. A case study and the challenges deriving by CCS are discussed.

OntoUML is a modeling language based on an underlying foundational ontology (UFO). Over the years, it has gained increasing attention in the area of ontology-driven conceptual modeling, becoming one of the most used languages in that field. In this paper, we report on a preliminary prototype that kickstarts the creation of pre-conceptual models in OntoUML from instance-level examples in PURO, a graphical modeling language originally developed for analogously kickstarting OWL ontology skeletons.

Supporting Goal-Oriented Requirement Engineering (GORE) in a systematic and comprehensive way may require the combination of distinct goal-oriented approaches. However, due to lack of common semantics, to combine these approaches can be challenging. In this work, we propose a semantic alignment between two complementary goal-oriented approaches: the ArchiMate Motivation Extension and the Goal-Question-Metric. The approaches are semantically analyzed in light of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), which provides real-world semantics for both languages, serving as a reference ontology to support the ontological analysis of concepts and relationships of both approaches and the alignment between them.

This paper provides a broader view on services than current Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches. We analyse a generic concept of service from economic, legal and business perspectives and discuss the implications for the health domain. This enables us to develop an ODP enterprise viewpoint of the service concept and its relationship with the ODP computational viewpoint, closely linked with the SOA concepts. The health domain provides a rich base for developing a comprehensive view on services. This is because of the inherent complexity of the domain with many actors, policies and dynamics involved in an increasingly multi-organisational and multijurisdictional context. The paper also provides a contribution in positioning services as part of an overall enterprise architecture for the health domain.

This article presents work system theory (WST) as a body of theory for analysis, explanation, prediction, and design and action related to systems in organizations. It provides background about how WST evolved, summarizes major components of WST, and explains that each of the five types of theory identified by Gregor ( ) appears in WST. The discussion of WST emphasizes its overall contribution to knowledge by emphasizing areas in which it differs from commonly used terminology, frameworks, and beliefs within the IS field. In a discipline in which even basic terms such as system, service, implementation, and user have many contradictory meanings, a key goal of WST is to demonstrate the possibility of using an internally consistent set of assumptions, concepts, frameworks, and principles as a basis for analysis, explanation, prediction, and design and action.

The term service appears in IS in contexts ranging from visible business activities performed for customers through invisible computerized responses to computerized requests deep within IT infrastructures. After distinguishing between rigorous definitions of service and treatment of service as an analytical lens, this paper presents a framework that distinguishes between four lenses for understanding and analyzing services and systems in the IS field. Each lens is directly applicable to many situations, and less applicable elsewhere. This paper summarizes each lens and identifies potential synergies between pairs of lenses. The synergies may help in using secondary lenses to support analyses guided by a primary lens. The range of lenses helps in understanding the range of meanings of service in IS.

Background: The context of this study is based on a belief by the researcher in that entrepreneurship is an appropriate and crucial mechanism that can drive economic the success of entrepreneurs in obtaining investor funding is one of the best ways in which entrepreneurial activity can be promoted.

Aim: The study aimed to develop a model that can be utilsed by South African SMME entrepreneurs to evaluate their investor readiness in order to increase their eligibility for investor funding and potential success in establishing or even running business ventures.

Setting: The study took place in South Africa amongst South African SMME
entrepreneurs.

Methods: By means of data collected from South African SMME entepreneurs through an online survey questionnaire and a literature review carried out pertaining to factors that influence the funding of entrepreneurial ventures in South Africa.

Results: Lack of information on the investor decision making process and supportive mechanisms around how entrepreneurs can obtain investor funding stunt the increase of entrepreneurial activity.

Conclusion: A model was developed that can assist South African SMMEs with preparing for investor readiness.

In a dynamic digital age, businesses are increasingly perceiving the vital role of customer engagement in achieving sustainable success in the long term. It has taken centre stage within a decade, as evidenced by publications ranging from sixteen in 2012 to 133 in 2023 and 103 in 2024. This study uncovers the bibliometric techniques to investigate the intellectual structure of the field and discovers highly influential areas and keywords in the dataset of 479 English-language scholarly articles drawn from the Scopus database, spanning from 2012 to 2025. VOS viewer is utilised to map prominent contributory journals, create a network of co-occurrences of keywords, identify prominent study areas, and lead future research fields. This study focuses on the impact of digital marketing on customer retention and business growth and provides insights for digital marketing consultants, academics, and practitioners.

Drawing upon Resource Based View (RBV of the firm this study seeks to elucidate how service capabilities affect performance in banking industry. The basic assumption of the study is that performance of banks can be enhanced to the extentthat banks are capable to deploy their resources and capabilities effectively for rendering banking services to their customers. Though there are several studies about internal capabilities and performance, this study stands unique by linking service capabilities with performance of banks. In this study a model is proposed that interlinks nine service capabilities with organizational performance based on empirical data collected from 351 managerial cadres of banks operating in India. The results reveal a strong support for the research proposition that service capabilities have significant and positive effect on performance of banks. The relative importance of all nine service capabilities and their effect on performance is also discussed. The findings of the study carry theoretical contributions for RBV based knowledge base and practical implications for banks working in competitive environments.

This paper contributes to the growing research about Human Resource Management (HRM) by examining the interrelationships between High Performance Work System (HPWS) and their effects on firm performance in the hotel industry. Recent studies stress the need to delve deeper into this link considering the role that may be played by certain dynamic capabilities as mediating variables . The current study proposes a multiple mediating model and tests the mediation. More specifically, this research establishes that human resource flexibility (HRF) and organizational ambidexterity (OA) play a mediating role in the HPWS-performance relationship. A variance-based structural equation modeling (Partial Least Squares) has been applied to a sample of Spanish hotel firms. The results obtained support the mediation hypotheses according to which HRF and OA play a critical mediating role in the HPWS-performance relationship.

Various consumer values and perceived product attributes trigger consumptive behaviors of athletic team merchandise . Likewise, using a principal component analysis technique on a student sample, a measurement scale was proposed that consisted of nine factors affecting the purchase of and multi-group invariance technique, the factorial structure and measurement equivalence of the model (included a new factor) was validated on a more generalizable sample in the current study. the gap between existing studies and more generalizable data found in the present study.

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 provid...

From one perspective, the concept of T-shaped professionals who combine depth of technical expertise with breadth of knowledge appears to be but the latest iteration of the concept of the Renaissance or universal man as exemplified by Leonardo da Vinci. The T-shaped ideal, on the other hand, emerged in the early 1990s and seems to respond to the needs of information technology (IT) enterprises specifically and more generally of firms that seek to distinguish themselves for creativity and innovation. In its original incarnation , what we now call the "T-shaped" individual or professional is described as a "hybrid manager" who combines IT skills with business skills. Twenty-five years later, one of the most frequently quoted papers on the subject (Demirkan and Spohrer, 2015) described the T-shaped professional as a worker who "has deep knowledge in just one area, but a good knowledge set and communication skills across many other areas." Demirkan and Spohrer also see the T-shaped metaphor more broadly as "an alternative paradigm for talent acquisition and management" (p. 13). Although there are many different visualizations of the T-shaped ideal, the knowledge and competencies associated with the T-shaped professional, as represented in the figure below, are fairly well agreed upon. (Demirkan and Spohrer, 2015, p. 13) Publications taking the T-shape as their subject have been both numerous and varied in their depth, quality, and approach. From such a large and unwieldy discourse, it is difficult to get a comprehensive view or deep understanding, though it is very easy to see that the concept appeals Commented [NKA(1]: Enthusiasm seemed the better word here since we had previously talked about "the enthusiasm" Commented [SBPD2R1]: agree Deleted: discussion Deleted: theoretical Deleted: body of literature Deleted: with conceptual approach.

Understanding status of public services and knowledge about the achievement of the needs and expectations of the public is important to map out the plan for development of services and is also significant for solving the everyday problem which is faced by the general people while accessing the services. Citizen Report Card is a simple and commendable research method, which provides systematic feedback to the public agencies about the qualitative and quantitative aspects of their performance. It is an effective tool of social audit which exhibits the causes of dis-satisfaction, weak accountability, and corrective action needed for improvement of service provided. This paper focuses on the process of conducting Citizen Report Card Survey. The six steps to be followed for the effective CRC survey have been explored herein. In the same regard, the sample study of CRC survey is reconnected with this paper on the basis of questionnaire survey. The satisfaction level of different service provided by the two VDCs of Chitwan has been studied. The information were collected from the respondents who received services within the six months from the study date. Most of the respondents replied the services provided by two VDCs were okay. Almost 75 per cent people seemed as neutral.** Only 2.5 per cent people were dissatisfied, whereas 23 per cent people were satisfied from the services provided by VDC. Those who replied the service is ‘okay’ means either they didn’t like to reply properly or they didn’t like to take response or they wanted to take the middle way although they were not satisfied. So the service providers must consider improving the ways to satisfy the service users.

Management of Virtual Organizations faces new challenges that traditional approaches cannot address. This research proposes a performance measurement framework for service oriented virtual organizations including a structural and a procedural component. The structural framework aligns the activities of partners in a virtual organization at three different layers. The first layer is designed for partners' strategic alignment through coordination of the value creation network. In the second layer, performance dimensions of partners' collaboration are defined and mapped to the service choreography model. The third layer focuses on assessing effectiveness and efficiency of partners' domain specific services, which is designed based on ITIL V3 service level management guidelines. In order to consolidate the structural framework, these three layers are integrated using a method for extracting service choreography model and SLA aggregation patterns from the value network. The p...

The article establishes theory-based design principles for constructing tools and methods for developing innovative digital services. The research method is developed from process advice offered for this task, in the context of design science. We define the objectives for the design task (solution objectives), identify and justify suitable kernel theories (service design, open innovation, service-dominant logic), and derive the principle normative elements of the chosen theories. Convergences and contradictions in the normative elements are analysed in relation to the method design task, and the prescriptive elements are synthesised into six core design principles. Implications for both the method design task, and research and practice in general are drawn.

Patient punctuality significantly impacts resource utilization and patient waiting times, among other quality indicators, within psychiatry clinics. In pursuit of service improvement, this study endeavors to develop effective appointment scheduling systems that optimally distribute patients' needs during clinical sessions, thereby enhancing resource utilization and patient satisfaction. In developing these scheduling rules, three patient-related uncertainties are considered: preference, availability, and punctuality. Various scheduling rules are evaluated based on their average total cost under different scenarios. The HSBGDM rules have emerged as a balanced approach for clinic operations, effectively managing physician time but occasionally leading to overtime variations. Increased patient delays often exacerbate physician idle times, particularly under IBVST and VBVST rules. Hybrid rules, such as the HSBGDM series, adapt well, improving patient wait times and managing unscheduled patients. However, scheduling systems like REPDM may prolong waits, potentially impacting patient satisfaction. Systems prioritizing new appointments can increase physician idle times due to unpredictability. While accommodating unscheduled patients enhances service quality, it may also cause disruptions. This study provides valuable insights into scheduling dynamics, assisting administrators in balancing efficiency, cost, and patient satisfaction.

Data-driven logic transforming public innovations 57 consumers while exchanging and making use of data-intensive public products and services? How can D-D logic be involved in public innovation and digital transformation? These questions guide in answering what is D-D logic and how it can be used to support public innovation and digital transformation. In the traditional value creation model, value is formed by the firms or manufacturers as a product or service, which is then distributed to consumers through suppliers for exchange based on monetary compensation . This notion of companies as value creators and customers as value users has been around since the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. Past and present business models have been designed from the viewpoint of these significantly production-oriented companies . Analogously, the public sector has been viewed as a producer of public goods and services that are consumed by citizens. Thus, citizens can be perceived as wasting public goods and passively receiving the services provided by governments and cities. This traditional view has been criticized in several academic disciplines, such as management, marketing, and public administration. Research in administrative sciences has recognized the importance of two-sided and multi-sided interaction between government and citizens ). For instance, many government-provided services, also referred to as E-government, do not involve only Government-to-Citizen informational and transactional relationships, but they are also often mediated by information systems developed in Business-to-Government relationships. To distinguish this is especially important in countries which have a long tradition of public service governance and therefore heavy infrastructure supporting service production. Paradoxically this may be a burden to societies' development towards D-D logic. On the contrary, novel governance systems such as highly digitalized systems in Estonia or E-government system build up from "tabula rasa" such as in Rwanda, may be very well functioning and from the beginning build according to D-D logic . To give a practical example, when you log in to an E-government service the authentication may be via a bank service. Thus, each time a citizen logs in to an E-government service, a transaction cost occurs between the bank and the government. For example, the average fee of bank authentication for using E-government service in Finland was 50 cents, before the legislation enforced a maximum fee of 10 cents (Parviala 2017). As another example, consider Cloudpermit, an e-permitting software for local government building departments that allows citizens to apply for building permits (for construction) only. In this case, the citizen applies for a building permit and provides all the necessary documentation to the E-government service that is hosted by the Cloudpermit company. The benefit of using such an E-government service is that everywhere in the country the application process and services are the same, and there are no municipality-or cityrelated differences related to e.g., professionalism, equality, responsiveness, etc., or need to physically visit city building departments. These examples highlight that

In the current era, the firms are not competing on the basis of products but today's competition is on the basis of services. In today's technological era, the increasing growth of service sector posed a global challenge and at the same time an opportunity for the organizations. This paper gives a clear understanding about the constituents of "resource" for service firms, because with the technological revolution the conceptual definition of a nation's or firm's resource has dramatically changed. For this purpose, the knowledge, networks and technology are scrutinized as interdependent elements. The maintenance of network with outside and inside partners and customers of the organization is facilitated only by technology. Technology cuts cost and specifically its radical impact is on the way of thinking about "resources" of a country or firm. This study contends that in service firms, technology, network of relations, and knowledge is the ultimate "resource" that provide potential for innovation. Operationally, novelty can be understanding as an organization's anticipation to "feel for the consumer" by providing superior value to the customers. Furthermore, it is also arguing in this study that, when a company is capable enough to focus its all energies to think on customer's behalf, innovation in service then starts.

Pumpkin is increasingly being recognized as an important food crop in Kenya mainly due to its nutritional value and adaptation in several agro-ecological zones. However, several factors and challenges limit its exploitation and commercialization as a viable enterprise. A research study was carried out to determine the factors and constraints affecting pumpkin production and marketing in Eastern and Central regions of Kenya. The overall objective of the study was to assess socioeconomic factors and constraints relating to smallholder pumpkin production and marketing. A household survey of 260 pumpkin growing households and a market survey of 172 primary traders were conducted using structured questionnaires. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, multiple regression and tobit regression analysis with the aid of SPSS and Stata computer software. The research showed that pumpkin productivity by smallholder farmers was below average in Eastern and Central Kenya. Pumpkin production by smallholder farmers was influenced by age and education level of household head, household size, on-farm income and engagement in off farm activities. Pumpkin market participation by smallholder farmers was influenced by household size and distance to market. On the other hand, traders and market factors that influenced pumpkin marketing included market price, membership in marketing association, selling frequency and distance to market. The major constraints in pumpkin production and marketing were pests and diseases, insufficient rainfall, poor market prices, exploitation by brokers, postharvest losses, inadequate market information, low consumer awareness and low demand. The proposed research and policy interventions to improve pumpkin productivity and enhance marketing include developing technologies and strategies to promote pumpkin as a viable enterprise. Other interventions include farmers training, promotion and awareness creation on pumpkin medicinal and nutritional values. Further research is required on pumpkin value chain analysis including roles of key actors and constraints at various levels of the pumpkin value chain.

The sustained success of variable pricing for revenue management (RM) is dependent on the creation of appropriate price points at which to sell a given product offering. To date, few studies have considered the impact of nonprice information on consumer reaction to price, and none have investigated the relative weights that consumers assign to price and the nonprice information available to them during different phases of the purchase choice process. This exploratory study uses a combination of eye tracking and retrospective think-aloud (RTA) interviews to examine how consumers consider the price and nonprice content generated by the firm and the nonprice information generated by other consumers during two distinct phases of the online choice process: browsing and deliberation. This study’s findings suggest that during browsing, firm-generated content appears to be very influential, particularly the image selected to represent the property in search results. Both firm-generated and ...

e 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.

In this paper we examined factors hypothesized to facilitate and constrain the adoption of a High Performance Work Systems (HPWS). In 2,410 firms across diverse industries and three time periods we found both organizational characteristics and external environmental contingencies to be associated with the adoption of a HPWS. Prior conceptual work in the field of personnel and human resource (HR) management has traditionally focused on the development, implementation, and evaluation of the wide range of organizational practices associated with this function. In recent years this largely "micro" orientation has been augmented by an increasing interest in what might be called the strategic role of human resources. Unlike the early work in strategic human resources , this new literature stream is not confined to the strategic management of the HR function. Rather, greater emphasis is given to the strategic impact of human resources at the level of the firm; namely, the impact of the firm's HR strategy on overall firm performance . This trend is reflected in recent work that reframes the role of the HR function as a partner in the management of the business (Jackson & Schuler, 1995;. Within this context, firm HR strategy, whether driven by formalized HR structures or embedded within general management, is comprised of an internally consistent system of HR management (HRM) practices that is aligned with and helps to implement the firm's competitive strategy Jackson & Schuler, 1995). Reflecting recent calls for the application of meso or cross-level research methodologies , the recent empirical work in this field is expanding to embrace a more holistic or "macro" orientation as well. Rather than focusing on one HR function or practice, the level of analysis has become clusters or "bundles" of High Performance Work Practices (HPWP) . For example, Pfeffer (1994) advocates the adoption of sixteen HPWP including employment security, selectivity in recruiting, work teams, incentive compensation, and employee ownership. Similarly, Huselid (1995) describes thirteen HPWP including comprehensive employee selection and development procedures, organizational work structures that encourage employee involvement, and performance management and incentive compensation systems that align the interests of employees with those of the shareholders. Conceptually, firm efforts to develop complementarities or synergies among HRM practices, and thereafter between the HRM system and firm competitive strategy, should lead to enhanced firm performance (Jackson & Schuler, 1995;. Collectively, the adoption of an operationally appropriate HPWP comprises an organizational High Performance Work System (HPWS). In a dynamic and highly competitive marketplace, the intent of such a system is to develop a workforce with the appropriate skills and motivation and to provide an organizational structure that allows employees to influence how their roles are performed . Indeed, prior work focusing on the firm-level impact of HPWS finds substantial economic returns associated with the adoption of such systems. Arthur (1994), , Delaney (in press), ), Huselid & Becker (1995; 1996a; 1996b all found that the adoption of a HPWS to have an economically and statistically significant impact on employee turnover, productivity, or corporate financial performance. More recently, special issues devoted to this topic have appeared in the Academy of Management Journal and Industrial Relations. The impact of this work has been to amplify earlier conclusions about the importance of HRM systems in the determinants of firm performance. As the empirical evidence supporting the existence of a HPWS-firm performance relationship accumulates, the moderate rate of HPWS diffusion observed by a number of authors becomes a more salient subject for inquiry . Indeed, if HPWS are so successful economically, why haven't all firms adopted them? The literature in the field of strategic management presents one plausible explanation. For a firm's HRM system to generate sustainable competitive advantage, its organizational structures must not be easily imitated by competitors . Moreover, to the extent that different firm competitive strategies require different role behaviors from employees, we should expect that the form and structure of the HRM system to reflect these requirements . In short, while firms should have an incentive to adopt HPWS, there are likely to be sufficient barriers to implementation that we

The role and shape of international trade agreements is changing. No longer simple devices for easing the movement of goods across borders, they are becoming both an instrument of integrated economic regulation at the supranational level and a tool of international relations within the emerging global economic order. The recently expanded scope of negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") serves as a case in point, one that focuses both on the trilateral relations between Japan, the United States, and China, and on the form of competition for control of the language of supranational economic regulation. The focus of this Article is on the decision by Japan to join the U.S.-led negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership, even as it pushes ahead with a Free Trade Agreement with China and Korea. This decision represents a critical new aspect of Japanese trade relationships that is likely to have significant economic and geopolitical effects. I will first describe the TPP from its genesis as an effort by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore to better integrate their economic relationships into current efforts to create a powerful free trade area of the Pacific that excludes China. I will then elaborate on the central strategic considerations that follow from this important decision in the relationships between Japan, the United States, and China, with emphasis on the way in which this affects contests for control of international rulemaking within the structures of economic globalization. For Japan, the TPP may represent a means to use a necessary containment of its own policy autonomy within complex

Several collaborative networks need to be involved in supporting the the life cycle of complex service-enhanced products. When addressing highly customized products, these networks need to consider the involvement of the customer and local stakeholders close to the customer. In this context, a set of integrated subsystems supporting both long-term strategic networks and goaloriented virtual organizations is proposed. Experimental results are presented in the context of service-enhanced products in the solar energy sector.

We investigate the value of accounting for demand seasonality in inventory control. We consider a single-location, single-item periodic-review lost sales inventory problem with seasonal demand in a retail environment. Customer demand has seasonality with a known season length, the lead time is shorter than the review period, and orders are placed as multiples of a fixed batch size. The cost structure comprises of a cost per order, a fixed cost per batch, and a per unit variable cost to model retail handling costs. We consider four ...

Çağdaş organizasyonlarda büyük veri ve veri yönetişiminin kullanımı, işletme değeri ve getirileri ile karakterize edilmiştir. Günümüzde yükselen yeni bir değer olarak karşımıza çıkması ve artan önemine rağmen, büyük veri ve yönetişimi hakkında çok az sayıda araştırma yapılmıştır. Söz konusu çalışmalar da büyük verinin çalışanların geliştirilmesine katkı sağlaması hususuna odaklanmamıştır. Bu çalışmada ise, büyük veri yönetişiminin çalışanın sosy al medya kullanımı (bilgi arama ve müşteri ilişkileri geliştirme gibi) ve T-yetenek üzerindeki etkisini inceleyen bir model ele alınmıştır. Anket verileri Antalya Türkiye'de çeşitli kurumlarda çalışan avukatlardan (n = 324) elde edilmiş ve veri analizi için varyansa dayalı yapısal eşitlik modelleme (PLS-SEM) tekniği uygulanmıştır. PLS-SEM sonuçları büyük veri ve veri yönetişiminin sosyal medya kullanımı ve çalışanların T-yeteneği üzerinde olumlu yönde etki ettiğin i göstermektedir. Bu çalışma, büyük veri yönetişiminin sosyal medya kullanımı ve çalışanların T-yeteneğini geliştirm e üzerindeki rolü hakkında verdiği fikirlerle diğer çalışmadan ayrılmaktadır. Teori, yönetim ve teknoloji üzerindeki etkilerinin tartışıldığı çalışma, araştırma sınırlılıkları ve gelecekte yapılacak çalışmalar için tavsiyeleri de içermektedir.

The concept of "service" has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various points of view. The variety of characterizations reveals that this notion, although an intuitive one, is far from trivial. Given the importance of services in enterprise computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and service-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment of various approaches and perspectives. In this paper we propose a commitment-based account of the notion of service captured in a core reference ontology called UFO-S. We address the commitments established between service providers and customers, and show how such commitments affect the service lifecycle. We show that the commitment-based account can serve to harmonize different notions of service in the literature.

While cloud computing has made data storage and administration easier than ever before, it has also made security much more difficult, especially in setups with many clouds. As the use of cloud computing increases, the need to guarantee the privacy, availability, and integrity of data is paramount. One strong cryptographic approach to these problems is Shamir's Secret Sharing Algorithm (SSSA). Strong security against unauthorized access and single-point failures is provided by SSSA through the use of numerous shares and the requirement of a set threshold of shares for reconstruction. This study evaluates the performance of secret sharing algorithms using a multinode cluster implemented with Cloudera CDH 5 and Apache Hadoop. The setup consisted of three virtual machines running CentOS 7, hosted on a physical machine with 32 GB memory and 2 TB storage. Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme (SSSS) was compared with its MapReduce variant (mrSSS) based on execution time, scalability, and resource utilization. Data sizes from 2 KB to 262 KB were tested across configurations with varying shares (N) and thresholds (K). Results showed that mrSSS outperformed SSSS in execution time and scalability, successfully handling larger data sizes and higher thresholds, whereas SSSS faced out-of-memory issues. These findings highlight the advantages of the MapReduce approach for scalable and efficient secret sharing.

Patient punctuality significantly impacts resource utilization and patient waiting times, among other quality indicators, within psychiatry clinics. In pursuit of service improvement, this study endeavors to develop effective appointment scheduling systems that optimally distribute patients' needs during clinical sessions, thereby enhancing resource utilization and patient satisfaction. In developing these scheduling rules, three patient-related uncertainties are considered: preference, availability, and punctuality. Various scheduling rules are evaluated based on their average total cost under different scenarios. The HSBGDM rules have emerged as a balanced approach for clinic operations, effectively managing physician time but occasionally leading to overtime variations. Increased patient delays often exacerbate physician idle times, particularly under IBVST and VBVST rules. Hybrid rules, such as the HSBGDM series, adapt well, improving patient wait times and managing unscheduled patients. However, scheduling systems like REPDM may prolong waits, potentially impacting patient satisfaction. Systems prioritizing new appointments can increase physician idle times due to unpredictability. While accommodating unscheduled patients enhances service quality, it may also cause disruptions. This study provides valuable insights into scheduling dynamics, assisting administrators in balancing efficiency, cost, and patient satisfaction.

This report covers key aspects of Service Marketing, including the unique characteristics of services, consumer behavior, and the role of employees in service quality. It highlights the GAPS Model and strategies for managing customer expectations and reducing risks to ensure high-quality service delivery.

We explore the transformative impact of integrating generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the form of large language models (LLMs), large behavioral models (LBMs), and agentic AI into physical service robots and how these will transform physical service encounters. This conceptual article first shows that GenAI-powered service robots (also referred to as GenAI robots) will be able to autonomously deliver more complex, customized, and personalized customer service. Second, GenAI's increasing capacity for no-code programming is expected to democratize robot training, improvement, and fine-tuning by frontline employees, thus improving robot performance. Third, the implications of GenAI robots are outlined for frontline employees (i.e., their work and job scopes, and a new role as citizen developer), customers (i.e., improved customer experiences and service outcomes), and the service firm (i.e., a pathway to cost-effective service excellence, continuous improvement and agility, alleviation of labor shortage, and the introduction of new ethical, fairness, privacy, health, and safety risks into physical service encounters). This article is the first to explore the theoretical and practical implications of GenAI robots in physical service encounters and opens a new stream of service research.

In this "information and knowledge" age, instead of traditional financial assets and even large markets, knowledge capital has been the competitive edge for major corporations. This has lead to a new concept called "knowledge management". Indeed, the identification of knowledge in business sectors as a competitive advantage and strategic resource intensifies the necessity of implementation of knowledge management (KM) in organizations. Knowledge management is the process of identifying, selecting, organizing, and transferring important information and skills, which exists as disorganized form in the organization. However, there are several stories of failed implementation of knowledge management in organizations. In order to succeed in implementing knowledge management, identification of the success factors for knowledge management is of great importance. The current research has therefore presented a conceptual model for implementing knowledge management successfully in Tehran municipality. This study has first identified effective variables on success of knowledge management; then has evaluated its significance and developed a conceptual model for the critical factors on successful knowledge management in the organization under study. According to the conceptual model offered by this research, these critical success factors are dimensions of organizational culture, strategy and leadership, organizational structure, information technology infrastructure and human resources.

It is often argued that multinational corporations (MNCs) are in a unique position to innovate business models that can help to alleviate poverty. This empirical study into intra-organizational aspects of pro-poor business innovation in two MNCs suggests, however, that certain elements of their management frameworks – such as short-term profit interests, business unit based incentive structures, and uncertainty avoidance – may turn into obstacles that prevent MNCs from reaching their full potential in this respect. We introduce the concept of intrapreneurial bricolage to show how middle manager innovators may promote pro-poor business models despite these obstacles. We define intrapreneurial bricolage as entrepreneurial activity within a large organization characterized by creative bundling of scarce resources, and illustrate empirically how it helps innovators to overcome organizational constraints and to mobilize internal and external resources. Our findings imply that intrapreneu...

Managing Information Technology (IT) investments continues to be a challenge for firms due to the difficulty associated with demonstrating IT contributions to organisational performance. Many IT contributions are not accounted for because they cannot be easily quantified. Linking IT to organisational performance is a complex problem that is informed by insights from multiple theoretical paradigms. The aim of this chapter is to comprehensively review work done by both academic and practitioners, and to explore why new approaches to managing IT investments are needed. To achieve this aim, we will start by defining IT assets and business value and exploring the different dimensions used to measure the business value of IT. Then, we will look at the early research on IT business value and the emergence of the Productivity Paradox. After that, we will delve into the three current theoretical paradigms: economics, management and sociology. The theoretical lenses and models used in these paradigms will also be discussed. Finally, future research directions are suggested.

Most state-of-the-art semantic segmentation approaches only achieve high accuracy in good conditions. In practically-common but less-discussed adverse environmental conditions, their performance can decrease enormously. Existing studies usually cast the handling of segmentation in adverse conditions as a separate post-processing step after signal restoration, making the segmentation performance largely depend on the quality of restoration. In this paper, we propose a novel deep-learning framework to tackle semantic segmentation and image restoration in adverse environmental conditions in a holistic manner. The proposed approach contains two components: Semantically-Guided Adaptation, which exploits semantic information from degraded images to refine the segmentation; and Exemplar-Guided Synthesis, which restores images from semantic label maps given degraded exemplars as the guidance. Our method cooperatively leverages the complementarity and interdependence of low-level restoration and high-level segmentation in adverse environmental conditions. Extensive experiments on various datasets demonstrate that our approach can not only improve the accuracy of semantic segmentation with degrada-

Academic libraries have been facing a paradigm shift to meet diverse needs of users and have introduced Learning Commons (LCs) for better services. LCs are collaborative learning spaces where other library services, resources, and staffs gather to serve LCs users at a single location. It has brought opportunities for librarians not only to create innovative services but also to co-create values with users. This joint attempt of value co-creation has widen the chance for academic libraries to reinvent themselves and to redesign LCs service for effective use. For successful value co-creation process in LCs librarians and commons staffs need to apply sufficient knowledge and skills which also considered as 'Blended Librarianship'. In this paper, we adopt Service Science concept of value co-creation in the library context and propose a theoretical framework for co-creation of values in academic libraries. Further research on the proposed framework will broaden the view of value co-creation in academic libraries.

Purpose: The world is getting older but healthier, making the over-65s healthy aging the only age-based growth segment in developed countries. This article offers a new perspective on healthy aging consumers and examines how service firms can use smart technologies, such as intelligent automation (IA), artificial intelligence (AI), and service robots, to improve their customer experience (CX). Design/methodology/approach: This conceptual article draws insights from the literature on healthy aging in consumer behavior, psychology, and medicine, amongst others, and the literature in service management and marketing on technology.