Abstract
Service Science has slowly been coming into focus in the last few years as a multidisciplinary approach to more effective management in the service industry. It is a new and highly relevant branch of knowledge for information professionals. This article explains what it is, how it has arisen and how important it could be for information service management, development and innovation. Service Science already features in the curricula of business schools and merits introduction into Library and Information Science courses and the practice of service provision.
Keywords
Introduction
Service Science is a dangerous topic for information professionals. Why? Because we think we know what it is. Many of us see it as managing services (which we do), or as being service oriented (which we are), or as having to do with welcoming clients in a friendly manner.
This article proposes to describe a few concepts concerning Service Science that can provide a base for further investigation of the topic.
It will explore the following questions: What is service, what are service systems, and what is Service Science? Why is it emerging as a discipline at this time? What is its relevance to information professionals? Is there research being done in Service Science?
My own discovery of Service Science began at the start of a career move to academia. I was requested to give a mock class at the University as part of the recruitment process. The audience included the Dean, the Head of the Department of Information Studies, the Head of the Research Department, two professors and the former head of a major library. The topic I was given was Service Science and its Relationship to Information Science.
Of course, I did not admit that I had never heard of Service Science and therefore my knowledge of its relationship to Information Science was, sadly, nil. I thought surely there would be something written on this in the professional literature. Wrong. Although there were articles about Service Science, very few were related to the information professions. I asked many brilliant knowledge workers in the international sector, and they too had never heard of Service Science but, like me, wanted to know what it was. So I plunged into it and the more I learned about Service Science, the more interesting and relevant it became.
I got through the presentation, concentrating on discussing the different facets of Service Science, and winging my way through the relationship part. Ironically, Service Science was not being taught in the Information Studies department, but in another faculty in the MBA curriculum.
So I decided to teach it wherever I could. I began by using my bachelor level students as a forum to test the water on this topic. I gave classes on Service Science in my Marketing, as well as in my Client Relationship Management courses and invited guest speakers to explore and expand this concept. The students responded positively to the classes. They considered it totally normal that they study Service Science. We had many fine discussions as to the place of Service Science in the information economy and in their future work. We looked at the importance of research and ‘real life’, and staying ahead of the game. Applying Service Science principles and interacting with different disciplines could lead to change, innovation, and moving forward. All of this was encouraging and fun. I began thinking that we should put ourselves at the head of the Service Science parade … or at least in the parade.
Service: The inevitable definitions
Definitions of service abound in the literature. Here are a few:
All economic activity whose output is not a physical product or construction (Baruch et al., 1987).
A time-perishable, intangible experience performed for a customer acting in the role of co-producer (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2005).
Application of competences for the benefit of another entity (Vargo and Lusch, 2004).
Deeds, processes, performances (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996).
Simply put, services are processes or performances that one person or organization does for the benefit of another. In all cases, service involves deployment of knowledge, skills, and competencies that one person or organization does for the benefit of another.
Information professionals know what service is. We are steeped in the tradition of rendering service to our clients and to our organizations. We use, and give, multiple services of all kinds every day.
Service systems
The basic unit of analysis in Service Science is the service system: ‘a configuration of people, technologies, shared information and other resources that interact with other service systems to create mutual value’ (Spohrer et al., 2008: 1). Many systems can be viewed as service systems, including families, cities, nations, companies, universities, libraries, hospitals, call centres, data centres among many others.
If we go by the above description, all the structures within which information professionals operate can be called service systems. We are thus a service and a service system: we deal with people, organizations, information and technology.
Service Science
Service Science, also known as Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), and more recently as Service Science, Management, Engineering and Design (SSME+D), is a discipline that began in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is an emerging discipline, that is, the field is in the process of defining, describing, delineating, and agreeing on its content.
Service Science is the study of services, service systems and value propositions. As discussed, service systems are dynamic combinations of people, information, organizations and technology that can create and deliver services. Value propositions are specific packages of benefits and solutions that a service system intends to offer and deliver to others. Service Science is the integration of many service research areas and service disciplines, including service economics, service marketing, service operations, service management, service quality, customer satisfaction, service strategy, service engineering, service human resource management, service computing, service supply chain, service design, service productivity, and service measurement.
The key to Service Science, as well as the challenge, is multidisciplinarity. It aims to focus on all aspects of service as a system of interacting parts. As such, Service Science draws on ideas from a number of existing disciplines and aims to integrate them into a coherent whole with its own identity.
When we take the four elements that make up a service system (people, technology, organizations and information), and look at them through an academic lens, we can see which departments or disciplines have dealt with or deal with these elements. In general, schools of management and business schools study organizations and how they are run. Technology is taught in schools of computer science and engineering, information in schools of information, and people are studied in the social sciences and the humanities. That is just the beginning of the multidisciplinary components in this new field. One can also include cognitive science, economics, organizational behaviour, human resources management, marketing, and operations research.
Establishing a new science is no easy task and the challenges are many, starting with the existing structure of academia, the lack of resources for research of multidisciplinary topics, the inertia of (some) governments and organizations. The naysayers to the birth of this new science are many – called ‘contrarians’ in some of the blogs.
But the people who are the movers and shakers in this field are promoting it with a zeal that is a wonder to behold. A critical mass seems to have been reached, and the momentum is carrying this new and vital subject into the world’s knowledge base.
Why is it emerging at this time?
Service Science is coming into being because of the spectacular rise of the service sector and its supremacy in today’s economy. The manufacturing of physical products peaked in the United States in the mid-1950s and has been decreasing ever since. At this point the service sector gradually began to outnumber and outweigh the other sectors in America and other parts of the world, thus becoming the main and fastest growing phenomenon in advanced economies worldwide.
By 2010 the service sector generated more than 70 per cent of the GDP in most advanced economies, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, 10 countries in the European Union, and Switzerland. Brazil (67%), Russia (59%), India (55%) and China (43%) are not far behind this figure (International Monetary Fund, April 2011). Eighty per cent of all new jobs in Canada between 1992 and 2005 were in the services industry (Canadian Services Coalition, 2006). The growth of services is expected to continue to rise in all countries.
We have moved from an agricultural economy, to an industrial economy, to a knowledge economy. People alive today, (for example, some baby boomers) can remember the era of their grandparents when people lived on farms and made their living from the products they grew or raised on their land. Then more people went to school, left the farms and moved to cities to work in factories or other jobs. More education meant more professionals coming into the job market, and many of the jobs became knowledge-intensive, including in finance, health, and education.
Service Science is a concept that is a result of our time: a necessity in the knowledge economy. It was born from the convergence of forces that are transforming the world, such as the continuous advancement of information technology, demographic shift (for example an older, wealthier population in certain areas, and areas where the younger generation is over 50% of the total population), sustainability concerns, social change and globalization, including the rise of the globally integrated enterprise. Global trends using web-based technologies, outsourcing and off-shoring are pushing us to create new ways of doing things.
These shifts – from the agricultural to the industrial to the knowledge economies – took only two hundred years. What is interesting is that we are no longer looking in the rear-view mirror to describe the paradigm shift – we are actually living it, daily, and marvelling at the speed and intelligence of the change.
At the same time as markets were shifting to service economies, there was an increasing use of information technology in traditional service areas, including utilities, building maintenance, retail, hospitality, finance, health, education, and government. The result was that the service sector became more knowledge intensive and required more technical skills. Technology alone has resulted in the creation of entire new service industries such as Amazon and Google and the rapid emergence of social computing tools. ‘New information technologies have constituted a technological and industrial revolution in service provisioning’ (IfM and IBM, 2008).
The growth in service jobs parallels the growth of the knowledge economy, in both developed and developing countries. The International Labour Organization (2007) reported that for the first time, in 2006, more people worked in the service sector worldwide than in either the manufacturing or agricultural sectors. The bottom line is that, around the world, the service sector is where the job growth is.
Graduates around the world were entering an economy with jobs to a large degree in the service sector. Were they equipped to do so? No, they were not. Were the public and private sectors getting the type of employee they needed? Not always. There was no platform for the study and research of services. Programmes to study service, service systems, and service innovation, especially in government, healthcare, and education, were sadly lacking. Many academic and government policy makers were still operating in a manufacturing paradigm rather than in a service paradigm.
The service sector accounts for most of the world’s economic activity, but it is the least studied part of the economy. Hence the move on the part of industry to position it as a discipline within an academic setting so that it can be studied and researched.
The IBM connection
The story of the emergence and positioning of Service Science cannot be told without including the participation of IBM and its continuing influence on this discipline.
When Dr James C. Spohrer, Innovation Champion and Director of IBM University Programs Worldwide, was setting up the IBM Research Service Department, he could not find job candidates with the right mix. What he needed was a combination of knowledge in computer science, engineering, management and social science. He complained about this to Henry Chesbrough, professor of business and innovation at Berkeley. Chesbrough reminded him that IBM had pushed forward Computer Science as a discipline by donating computers to universities and then helping them create curricula to teach students how to use the machines. So why not do the same with Service Science? The two of them were so excited about the idea that they called Paul Horn, then director of IBM Research, who immediately approved the idea.
IBM had the need, as well as the means, the conviction and the drive to call for a multidisciplinary approach to the study of services. IBM signalled the fact that nations, businesses and universities were long overdue in establishing a systematic knowledge base for services that would be as important an area of study as that of computers and computational systems. IBM has made a wealth of material on Service Science available including wikis, modular courses, presentations, blogs, a community of practice and more, as can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spaces/ssme.
Today more than 500 universities offer a Service Science programme – a mix of computer science, social science and business management. This includes many top universities in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Australia and Singapore, to name a few.
Relevance to the information professions
And what does this have to do with us?
Well, the faculties receiving grants to teach and research Service Science are computer science, management, engineering and business administration. A case can be made for Schools of Information becoming proactive in this arena. If any profession today is dealing with people, organizations, technology and information, it is the knowledge worker in information. Our service expertise is based on knowledge and access to the content that technology offers.
So what do we have to learn about a science of service?
First of all, it is important to know about the new movements in this vast arena called information. The rapid growth of the service economy has had an impact on all aspects of our society, and jobs are increasingly based on information and services. Demand is growing for workers with the knowledge and skills to be effective in this new economy.
Service Science describes a new profile for the skills and abilities of knowledge workers for the 21st century. As information professionals need to develop and explore future roles in the information economy, an important part of our re-definition can result from our participation in Service Science. T-shaped professionals, as they are being called, have a deep knowledge of one or two areas of study (the vertical bar of the T) and the expertise and communication skills to be able to collaborate across many disciplines and to apply knowledge in areas other than their own (the horizontal bar of the T). This new profile is big news, and although it is outside the scope of this article to go into it in depth, it should be signalled to all faculties and schools as a necessity for the professional in the knowledge economy. As the service sector grows at the expense of the manufacturing and industrial sectors, T-shaped skills built by disciplines like Service Science will be in growing demand.
Information professionals would agree that their work is in the service sector and they strive to provide the services that they think their clients need. As seen earlier, all information institutions are service systems. We need to be aware of and to explore the issues in our information based economy. Because service is the major component of the information practices of the future, all systems will see significant shifts in their approach. What is our role in an economy that is based on information? We need to see the big picture and how we fit in it.
Information professionals are already applying some of the principles found in Service Science. We measure performance, we have methods of evaluating client satisfaction, we innovate in services, and we want to increase the quality of our services. Service Science can help us do this in a more systematic, dare I say scientific, manner, giving us new methods and models for evaluation, for innovation, for understanding needs and for studying the positive or negative impact of new services. It can show us how to combine formal service models with models of human behaviour to understand the efficacy of our services.
The vantage point of a multidisciplinary offer is a powerful place. Innovation often occurs when individuals or groups move to the connecting points between disciplines. Steve Jobs often spoke of his love for the intersection of the humanities and technology. His chosen biographer, Walter Isaacson, says it this way: …when societies around the world are trying to build creative digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness, imagination, and sustained innovation. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. (Isaacson, 2011)
Ideas from management, science and engineering as applied to the understanding of service-driven organizations can intersect with information work. Service Science calls for more systematic innovation. It asks the question – how is innovation encouraged and established? Can we create and innovate with more systematic methods? Can we increase the scope of our offer to better distribute this knowledge? These questions and their answers are pursued in the study of Service Science.
There is a lot to be learned from Service Science concerning the needs and changing expectations of our public. We can capitalize on growth opportunities by looking at our services from other points of view. Service Science can show, for example, the time saved in information search and delivery and therefore the lowering of costs. Could we gain better knowledge of information mining? Can we better apply SOA (service-oriented architecture) and web services to implement service systems? The knowledge being articulated in Service Science can be used by our profession, and can lead to the development of new and better services.
Authors He and Wang (2008) argue for the fact that old methods of service can no longer meet the needs of users in library and information institutions. They describe the old notion that maintained that the service could improve by adding digital reference services, for example, to traditional services. They argue that this type of cosmetic change is not enough from a Service Science point of view, which would concentrate more on people and pay attention to creating value.
Ongoing research
Service Science involves partnerships with business and government and these are sources of funding for the research, development and teaching of this new discipline.
Service Science research is based on the relationship between people, technology, organization and information. This research will yield models, methodologies, processes and software tools that create and deliver services more efficiently. A better understanding of human behaviour is also critical. The resources of social sciences such as psychology, sociology and anthropology provide useful information about the way people and groups work and interact. We can benefit from behavioural observation studies and by learning how to measure perception, for instance.
Although an in-depth look at the research is not within the scope of this article, there is one major study that is important to note. The Centre for Services Leadership at the WP Carey School of Business at Arizona State University ran an 18 month study to establish a set of global, interdisciplinary research priorities and to outline a foundation for the science of service (Ostrom et al., 2010). This remarkable effort included the participation of over 300 academics from a variety of disciplines, and business executives from a wide range of companies and geographies. The study led to the naming of ten research priorities. Each priority includes a list of targeted research topics for business executives, academics, and government leaders.
This study serves as a strong point of reference for academics, business and government and gives a solid, practical road map for future research and policy decisions. ‘Through academic, business, and government collaboration, we can enhance our understanding of service and create new knowledge to help tackle the most important opportunities and challenges we face today’ (Ostrom et al., 2010). This article has become one of the most cited in this area.
All ten priorities in this study are of relevance and interest for the information professional. We can contribute greatly to these research goals, and the application of this research will enhance our work. These ten priorities are: Fostering service infusion and growth. Improving well-being through transformative service. Creating and maintaining a service culture. Stimulating service innovation. Enhancing service design. Optimizing service networks and value chains. Effectively branding and selling services. Enhancing the service experience through co-creation. Measuring and optimizing the value of service. Leveraging technology to advance service.
The research that is being done in Service Science is not happening in Schools of Information Science. With a few exceptions, such as the iSchools at the University of Toronto and the University of California at Berkeley, this new science is not being taught in our schools either.
Conclusion
We have taken a brief look at the concept of service and service systems as defined in the new discipline of Service Science. We have seen the reasons that this topic is emerging at this time, and at this point in the information economy. We have questioned its relevance to the information professions, and to the information professional. We know that research has begun in this field, and a major study was cited.
When I began researching this fascinating story, I looked at Service Science from the point of view of a practitioner and a teacher of information. These were the sectors that I wanted to reach. But as I kept learning and writing and discussing Service Science, I found that this material is also relevant and timely for management and business schools, IT specialists, service industries, and companies interested in the economic value of information. For instance, my Swiss banker friends want to know all about it! One thing is certain, this question always comes up: ‘So what’s Service Science?’
I am convinced that we need to be involved in Service Science. If any profession today is dealing with people, technology, organizations and information, it is the knowledge worker in information. Service Science is something we as information professionals should be aware of with the view of incorporating its principles in our minds, our work, our research and our curricula.