Henri Karppinen

Knowledge management practices in healthcare services

– The purpose of the study is to develop understanding about the role of information and knowledge in healthcare processes and thereby create a basis for practices that would better support the actual service provision. This paper seeks to model and analyze the service processes of two case settings: laboratory and radiology units of a Finnish regional healthcare system., – The main actors, their knowledge needs, current knowledge practices and bottlenecks in knowledge flows were recognized. The paper combines conceptual analysis and empirical findings. The empirical data were collected in the autumn of 2010 and consist of 32 thematic interviews in two units of a healthcare organization in Finland. The themes of the interviews are related to current knowledge practices and processes., – The paper exemplifies an approach that provides a systematic basis for analyzing different aspects of knowledge management in healthcare processes. The approach provides valuable insights for analyzing knowledge‐based foundations of health services and it is expected that this analysis helps elaborate the practical knowledge processes of healthcare organizations., – The paper approaches health information management from the viewpoint of knowledge management discourse and highlights the importance of knowledge‐based value creation. Instead of mere information transfer or delivery the paper emphasizes the knowledge‐in‐use perspective. Despite the essential role of knowledge assets, the development efforts have mainly concentrated on solving local problems with context specific technical solutions.

Identifying product and process configuration requirements in a decentralised service delivery system

Designing new service solutions and improving the performance of existing ones have always played a central role in service management. In order to maintain the capability to create innovative solutions, a necessary step is to extend the closed management models towards understanding the systemic nature of services and how systemic characteristics affect service operations management. The main purpose of the study is to identify system characteristics in a service delivery system and to find out how they affect the product and process configurations on the operational level. The main contribution of the study is providing new insight into product and process configurations and how these static artefacts require dynamic information in order to work properly. The results are based on an empirical case study in a decentralised healthcare service delivery system. The practical and future research implications aim at adding systems thinking into service system research and service operations management.

Operations management in improving elderly home care

The roots of operations management (OM) in manufacturing context, but there has been a growing interest in applying OM approaches in different types of service contexts, including the non-profit sector. In this study, we explore what OM research can do to support the improving of elderly home care. A systematic literature review was done to find out the typical managerial implications of service operations management (SOM) research. Interviews and a group decision support system session during an improvement project were used to point out the operational-level problems and development targets in organising elderly home care. By comparing the research focus of SOM with the operational-level problems observed in the case context, the paper helps in bridging the gap between SOM theory and practice. This research helps both researchers and practitioners understand how SOM research can benefit different types of target organisations.

Customer input management in service processes: needs and tools

With the increasing interest on customer inputs and their meaning in services, it is necessary to explore customer input management in service processes. This research focuses on the needs and tools of customer input management in service processes through a case study conducted in a healthcare service organisation. The findings emphasise the fact that there are multiple situations in services where customer input management is justified, but the use and selection of management tools does not always meet the requirements of the service process and management needs. The results of this study provide a rich contribution towards the customer input features that need management in service processes, and presents management tools for different management situations. Practical suggestions are offered to service managers to make their service processes more effective with customer input management.

Customer input failures in service processes

Customer inputs in service processes are explored in the study. Customer input failures, their causes and consequences are observed through a case study conducted in a healthcare service organisation. The paper provides openings for future research by developing research propositions and constructing an integrated framework that includes the characteristics of customer input failures in service processes. The research provides a foundation for exploring and developing methods for quality management of customer inputs which can be utilised by service managers to make their service processes more effective.

Resource integration and production approach for managing a service-technology interface in service systems

Service is about applying and integrating resources in a way that the applier or integrator is able to create value for her/him. In order to support value creation, the service provider has to produce value creation potential for the customer and transform and communicate service logic into practical processes and tasks. Traditionally, information design and management has been left to information and software experts, causing additional model and communication challenges for service management. In this study, the focus is on an understudied area in service research, where the information perspective aims at connecting service operations to more abstract design models and vice-versa from the service managers’ and providers’ perspective. Design science methodology and constructing a design artefact offer an engineering-oriented approach for creating flexible and innovative operations management solutions through advanced service information. The design artefact is tested and demonstrated in two service systems in healthcare and transportation contexts. The evaluation of the artefact and the results show that information processing and management have a significant role in the service context, where multiple perspectives with artificial and real design as well as realisation elements should be managed simultaneously.

What Causes Prolonged Lead-Times in Courts of Law?

The paper highlights the challenges in process performance issues in large public sector professional organizations. Factors causing process inefficiencies and prolonged lead-times in two Finnish Courts of Law are introduced and analyzed.

A modular response model for increasing awareness of systemic variety in service operations

Successful service requires a responsive service delivery system with adaptive operations. People participate in services constantly in different roles, but it is still difficult to capture and transform the realisation into usable information for operative decision-making. The service literature provides insights into the design of a service system at the abstract level, but service operations are still managed in a less systemic manner. We propose that systems thinking has to be acknowledged in service operations, and therefore this study focuses on developing a framework for managing process-level variety in a service process through systemic response components. The developed framework is evaluated in two emergency rescue service systems by utilising the case study methodology. The main contribution of this study is providing a model for operational response creation through operational information. The practical implications encourage adding new competences for information processing as a part of ser...

Service designs and mindsets – extracting experiential knowledge from service realisation

Effective service operations management leans heavily on information systems and humans. In practice, operational decisions require time-consuming information mining, and time is money. If an employee can interpret the environment and operational information without shared rules, the risk of making costly wrong assumptions and decisions is high. We propose that creating better understanding of how an employee experiences an operational event can reveal information that is not currently available. This study focuses on conceptualising the employee experience by designing a method for extracting experiential knowledge from the employee’s perspective and using this knowledge during resource configuration. The designed artefact has been field-tested and evaluated in a healthcare system according to design science principles. The results provide an innovative contribution to service operations management when trying to release time for right and productive activities. By utilising the experiential knowledge, service managers will be able to decrease the complexity in service systems.

Recovering existing service design through reverse engineering approach

The paper introduces a procedure for recovering the service design in existing service systems, based on reverse engineering methodology. The complete procedure for planning a reverse engineering procedure, implementing it and analysing the results is presented. The main objective in the methodological approach is to map the service based on real implementation. The methodology and the reverse engineering tool approach are based on a review of forward engineering methods in services, and designing services and reverse engineering implementations in computer and information systems. The implementation of the framework is demonstrated in an empirical service system consisting of human, material and information elements. The main findings of the study concern analysing the existing service system, how the existing service system includes various types of service designs, and how higher level abstractions of the service system reveal new insights into the system.