Service system resilience under resource scarcity:from vulnerability to balanced centricity

Purpose: Disruptive shocks significantly compromise service contexts, challenging multidimensional value (co)creation. Recent focus has been on consumers experiencing vulnerability in service contexts. However, the susceptibility of service firms, employees and other actors to the impacts of disruptive shocks has received little attention. Since resource scarcity from disruptive shocks heightens tensions around balancing different needs in the service system, this paper aims to propose a framework of balanced centricity and service system resilience for service sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a conceptual model process, the paper integrates resilience and balanced centricity (method theories) with customer/consumer vulnerability (domain theory) resulting in a definition of multiactor vulnerability and related theoretical propositions. Findings: Depleted, unavailable, or competed over resources among multiple actors constrain resource integration. Disruptive shocks nevertheless have upside potential. The interdependencies of actors in the service system call for deeper examination of multiple parties’ susceptibility to disruptive resource scarcity. The conceptual framework integrates multiactor vulnerability (when multiactor susceptibility to resource scarcity challenges value exchange) with processes of service system resilience, developing three research propositions. Emerging research questions and strategies for balanced centricity provide a research agenda. Research limitations/implications: A multiactor, balanced centricity perspective extends understanding of value cocreation, service resilience and service sustainability. Strategies for anticipating, coping with and adapting to disruptions in service systems are suggested by using the balanced centricity perspective, offering the potential to maintain (or enhance) the six types of value. Originality/value: This research defines multiactor vulnerability, extending work on experienced vulnerabilities; describes the multilevel and multiactor perspective on experienced vulnerability in service relationships; and conceptualizes how balanced centricity can decrease multiactor vulnerability and increase service system resilience when mega disruptions occur.</p

The interplay between customers’ incidental and integral affects in value experience

Current understandings of emotional value focus on integral affects that are directly related to present judgements and choices. This neglects recent research on the complexity of affect and dismisses affects triggered by situations, events, or persons encountered in daily life outside of the decision-making situation or process; that is, incidental affects. In this article, we analyse the interplay between customers’ incidental and integral affects in value experience during life transitions. Based on the qualitative data collected on real-estate services, we unveil the internal dynamics of affective value by showing the intrapersonal and interpersonal forms of interplay (spillover, ambivalence, divergence and convergence) between integral and incidental affects. This advances knowledge on the composition and dynamics of the concept of affective value and on the affective value experience in life transitions. </p

Autonomy or security? Core value trade-offs and spillovers in servicescapes for vulnerable customers

This study deepens knowledge on the implementation of core values in servicescapes by analyzing how core value trade-offs and spillovers occur within servicescapes and how vulnerable stakeholders cope with them. We use an explorative approach and draw on rich data collected in two nursing homes. Our study demonstrates how the autonomy-security trade-offs originate in different dimensions of the servicescapes. Further analysis reveals how individual customers may conflict with the core values and core purposes of the respective servicescapes. We also contribute to the discussion on customer vulnerability by considering vulnerability in the extended customer entity and by identifying the active coping mechanisms of vulnerable customers. Practitioners can increase the quality of care by identifying and taking into account the core values of both vulnerable primary and secondary customers and by deliberately supporting their coping with core value trade-offs and spillovers

No place like home - Or is there? Extended transformational potential of nursing homes during vital conjunctures

Aims and objectives The purpose of this study is to explore how the concept of ‘feeling at home’ manifests in nursing home environments and influences the transformational potential of such homes—servicescapes where customers experience vital conjunctures. Background Recent research on places highlights the potential of service venues as places that can promote well-being. Nursing homes bridge the concepts of ‘home’ and a service with transformational aspirations. Moving to a nursing home can be regarded as a vital conjuncture, yet despite the resultant mixed emotions, nursing homes can generate positive changes and meaningful relations. Design; Methods A qualitative field study with ethnographic features was conducted in two Finnish nursing homes. The data consist of observations and 64 semi-structured interviews. COREQ guidelines were followed. Results ‘Feeling at home’ is built on: (1) artefacts and surroundings, (2) functions and activities and (3) relationality and atmosphere. A home-like experience related to each category is important in enabling customers to feel at home, thus assisting in dealing with the vital conjuncture, but the transformative power of nursing homes is linked most closely to respectful, kind attendance of the others and a positive atmosphere. Conclusions The roles of nurses and a homely servicescape are essential in dealing with residents' vital conjunctures, whether those residents employ resistance or adjustment coping methods. Positive transformations that evoke residents' re-balancing and well-being are enabled in nursing homes that support residents' important relationships, identity, safety and self-efficacy. This positive transformation also aids family members with their associated vital conjunctures, thus multiplying the service's transformational potential. Patient or public contribution Service users and caregivers were involved in the design and conduct of the data in this study. Relevance to clinical practice Creating a homely atmosphere in nursing homes fosters not only residents' but also family members' re-balancing and well-being

Escapism or Integration? : Family Constellations Reflecting on the Leisure-Time Physical Activity of Adults

Insufficient physical activity is an increasing threat to personal well-being and public health. While significant research has focused on the factors that encourage or restrict physical activity, the impact of family constellations on physical activity remains under-researched despite its evident impact on leisure-time physical activity (LTPA). This study aims to analyze how being embedded in a family constellation reflects on LTPA. Our data are drawn from interviews with 89 working adults living in a household with a spouse and/or children. The results indicate that individuals have both escapist and integrative motivations for LTPA, which reflect particular family constellations. This finding leads to the following LTPA dimensions: solitary escapism, co-escapism, integrative escapism, and integration. Furthermore, the mechanism is bidirectional: family affects LTPA, and LTPA reflects on personal and family well-being. Public and private actors can utilize these findings when compiling policies and recommendations and developing services intended to increase LTPA.peerReviewe