Stephen K. Kwan

Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED): An Emerging Discipline - Outline & References

The growth of the global service economy has led to a dramatic increase in our daily interactions with highly specialized service systems. Service (or value-cocreation) interactions are both frequent and diverse, and may include retail, financial, healthcare, education, on-line, communications, technical support, entertainment, transportation, legal, professional, government, or many other types of specialized interactions. And yet surprisingly few students graduating from universities have studied anything about service or service systems. Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED), or service science for short, is an emerging discipline aimed at understanding service and innovating service systems. This article sketches an outline and provides an extensive, yet preliminary, set of references to provoke discussions about the interdisciplinary nature of SSMED. One difficult challenge remaining is to integrate multiple disciplines to create a new and unique service science.

Uncertain, Incomplete, and Inconsistent Data in Scientific and Statistical Databases

This chapter is a survey of several issues and applications in uncertain, inconsistent, and incomplete data in scientific and statistical databases (SSDBs).

Customer-Driven Value Co-creation in Service Networks

Service Dominant Logic (SDL), a contemporary view of services as a foundation of all economic exchange, takes a very high level perspective of provider–customer interaction. The role of the customers in value creation is emphasized but their role in the creation of the value proposition choice sets is not explicitly considered. From another perspective, the notion of value co-creation addressed in existing Service Science studies often assumes the value proposition to be static – i.e., proposition/acceptance happens before the start of service and is not visited again during the service. This paper attempts to connect the macro view of SDL to the system view of Service Science in creating a framework of Service Value Network (SVN) that accounts for both provider and customer driven value co-creation.

Service science: on reflection

In this chapter, we reflect on the historical challenges and the future prospects for the scientific study of service phenomena. The growing dominance of the “service” component of national economies and corporate revenues has spurred expanded interest in service systems and service innovation. Service innovations based on global-scale information technology platforms are further fuelling interest in the scientific study of digitally connected service via cloud computing and smart phones. Practitioners and employers should be aware of and take advantage of the emergence of service science, as more and more universities around the world expand and deepen their service science-related curricula and research.

Designing Multichannel Value Propositions to Enhance Value-Cocreation Phenomenon

Service Science introduced the abstraction of service systems, which while jointly interacting can cocreate value. The term “cocreation†captures the collaborative nature of value creation. Whilst value, between two or more service entities, is always cocreated, value-cocreation is rarely considered in designing a service even though this is a main design driver that leads to successful construction of Value Propositions1 (VP). The presence of multiple channels (in-person, phone, and web) may give rise to opportunities for enhanced value-cocreation. Still, different channels may lead the beneficiary of the service to interact as a value coproducer, linking value-cocreation to his/her capability to properly perform the service. The authors explore the opportunity to increase the value cocreated in a service process through improved design using multiple channels. The authors develop a method that guides service designers in the construction of more effective multichannel Value Propositions, increasing the opportunities to enhance the cocreation of value. This paper should be of value to both researchers and practitioners looking for new ways to construct effective multichannel Value Propositions.

A Creed for Service Designers

Some recent discussions in the service science community have been around the need for research on and innovation of human-centered service systems (HCSS) from a multiple discipline perspective. HCSS are complex because of the involvement of people, multiple stakeholders with usually incommensurate value systems spanning networks of resources. Designers of such systems have to draw knowledge and connections from service science, system thinking, design thinking, business, and engineering. In this research, we build an underpinning of the system thinking aspect of service design based on Churchman’s The Design of Inquiring Systems and Swanson’s Churchman’s Theory of Design Integrity as an important aspect of the education of service designers. This will form the philosophical foundation of a creed or set of beliefs and aims that will guide the service designer’s actions. Of particular relevance to service system design is Swanson’s interpretation of Churchman’s work to propose a Theory of Design Integrity, i.e., designing the wholeness, soundness, and virtue of a system. A system professional can design such a system with precepts based on Churchman’s necessary conditions to conceive a system S: it is teleological; it has a measure of performance, a client whose interests (value) are served, teleological components, an environment, a decision maker of resources, and a designer with good intentions to maximize the system’s value to the client; and it is stable. Even though Churchman was not specifically referring to service systems, we see that his ideas are as fresh today as then in applying the precepts to value cocreation scenarios. The Theory of Design Integrity also explicitly offers a virtue component that is lacking in the current service design literature. We feel that this should be an essential part of a service designer’s creed in today’s climate of privacy and security concerns. Swanson also introduced the role of a social witness as an observer who evaluates the system’s design integrity by maintaining a critical and responsible stance not separable from the system. We will illustrate the applicability of the Creed for Service Designers with service system scenarios and describe how it could be incorporated into service design education.

An Economic Model for Comparing Search Services

Search services are now ubiquitously employed in searching for documents on the Internet and on enterprise intranets. This research develops an economic model for comparing search services based on a user’s information requirement in a decision making scenario. The model considers the noise effects of querying, search and filtering of results. Different search engines might return different results for the same query based on the characteristics of the search engine’s algorithms and the extent of captured data. Users are thus faced with the selection of a search service in order to minimize cost, reduce uncertainty, and maximize the benefits derived for their efforts. A methodology for comparing search services based on the model is presented. This comparison can also be used by search service providers to enhance alignment between their objectives and that of users as well as for pricing of their products and services. A preliminary experiment comparing three popular search services is used to illustrate the model.

Service Science Research and Service Standards Development.

Recent increases in interest in the development of service standards among standards organizations follow the trend of growth in the service sector. This research in progress reviews the relationship between service science research and service standardization to determine whether there are areas of convergence and mutual influence and opportunities to increase exchanges between these two sides for mutual benefit. Service standards published by ISO and current service standards projects were categorized into Types (1) back stage, and (2) front stage of service activities. The definitions of “service” were also extracted from ISO standards to determine their commonality with service science concepts. It was found that ISO service standards were mostly related to back stage of service activities but some increase in projects with front stage orientation was seen. There was scant evidence that the definition of service used in standards had some commonality with service science concepts. Limitations to the research together with recommendations for further work that would foster mutual benefits for both service science research and standards development were discussed.

Global Perspectives on Service Science: Japan

This contributed volume presents the experiences, challenges, trends, and advances in Service Science from Japans perspective. As the global economy becomes more connected and competitive, many economies depend the service sector on for growth and prosperity. A multi-disciplinary approach to Service Science can potentially transform service industries through research, education, and practice. Offering a forum for best practices in Service Science within Japan, the volume benefits its audience by sharing viewpoints from a wide range of geographical regions and economies. The book is organized as follows: Foundations of Service Science and the service industry sector Public/Private sector partnerships, policies, trade in services, future prospects Contributions from science, social science, management, engineering, design as well as industry sector perspectives Road-maps, methodology, business development, strategies and innovative models, application of information technology, performance measures, and service system design Education and workforce development Case studies from practice, research and educational community Future Directions in Japan This book includes three Forewords written by key leaders in Service Science: Takayuki Aso (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology in Japan) Yasuhiro Maeda (Director, Service Affairs Policy Division METI) Norihisa Doi (Professor Emeritus, Keio University and Service Science, Solutions and Foundation Integrated Research (S3FIRE) Program Officer, JST/RISTEX)