Service - Oriented Challenges for Design Science: Charting the “E”-volution

This article links service-dominant (S-D) logic and design science to advance service system design, which is characterized by the indeterminacy of the design problems and outcome measures. Although much progress has been made in IT and IS toward service-orientation, these developments are often adaptations of goods-dominant (G-D) logic, rather than a full transition to a service orientation. In this paper, the “e”-volution of systems design, transitioning from G-D logic to S-D logic, is described and the IS design challenges implied by S-D logic are identified. To devise new, service-oriented modeling, methods and evaluation measurements, S-D logic endorses a fundamental shift in design thinking for design science from “bounded rationality” for problem solving to “expandable rationality” for design for the unknown. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol2/iss1/3

How Practice Diffusion Drives IoT Technology Adoption and Institutionalization of Solutions in Service Ecosystems

This paper proposes a framework for considering how practice diffusion drives the adoption of IoT technology and fuels institutionalization of solutions within service ecosystems. Practice diffusion requires the adaptation of a practice (using a wearable device) as it emerges across distinct sociocultural contexts. The adaptation of practices allows for the adoption of technology in different ways. New materials are linked with pre-existing meanings and competences as practices emerge and become embedded within a social structure. For IoT technologies, materials include a device and its associated digital data. Thus, practice adaptation requires linkages that enable the integration and use of both a device and data. We highlight a growing mental health crisis and the potential of wearable devices as medical aids, particularly for adolescents who spend much of their time connected to the internet. We consider important linkages to help institutionalize unique solutions for those in need

Service Ecosystem Emergence from Primitive Actors in Service Dominant Logic: An Exploratory Simulation Study

Service-dominant (S-D) logic has been proposed as a theoretical foundation for understanding economic exchange and value cocreation from a service-for-service perspective. In the S-D logic framework, all economic entities are commonly represented as resource-integrating, service-providing actors, relying primarily on operant resources, such as skills and knowledge. Service exchange is coordinated by institutional arrangements, which form the bases of service ecosystems, the unit of analysis of value cocreation. Institutional arrangements and service ecosystems emerge from the resource integrating and service-exchanging activities of the actors. This paper reports a preliminary investigation of the emergence of these structures from basic actor relationships, through agent-based simulation. The simulations under different conditions show that a collection of agent interactions generates systemic behavior typical for service ecosystems. This paper also suggests directions for future research

Microscale Thermal-Transpiration Gas Pump

A recent addition to the growing class of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is a single stage of a Knudsen compressor. This device was fabricated and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of Knudsen compressors as miniature vacuum pumps for future portable scientific instruments. The attributes of Knudsen compressors that make them attractive as miniature vacuum pumps are that they contain no moving parts and operate without need for lubricants or working fluids

Service Ecosystems Emergence and Interaction: A Simulation Study

This paper describes the examination of emerging institutions and phase transition of service ecosystems in value cocreation processes under the basic tenets of service-dominant logic. We conducted several computational experiments with an agent-based model, in which we represented the generic actors and their operant resources, and examined their interactive behaviors in agent-based simulations. In the simulations, actors started changing their social properties from self-supporting individuals to reciprocal resource integraters. During the transaction, the actors increasingly specialized into specific roles and clusters of actors with the identical roles emerged – pointing towards processes of institutionalization, and dependent on the conditions of land fertility levels. Several phase transitions were observed in emerging service ecosystems, which were supported by complex structures of exchange and collaboration networks

The Role of Emergence in Service Systems

It has been recognized that a service systems perspective, informed by service-dominant logic, provides a dynamic approach for studying value co-creation. According to this view, value is the increase in the viability of the system in which actors co-create value. A construct from systems theory – emergence – can be of particular interest in contributing to and detracting from systems viability. Emergence is related to the nonlinear interactions characterizing systems’ elements that can give rise to novel and unpredictable properties not contained in the elements. This paper relates emergence to service systems based on the service-dominant logic and systems theory literature. Such issues can be useful for service science scholars to identify new research avenues for service systems

Assessing and enhancing the impact potential of marketing articles

Although the impact of marketing is a recognized priority, current academic practices do not fully support this goal. A research manuscript’s likely influence is difficult to evaluate prior to publication, and audiences differ in their understandings of what “impact” means. This article develops a set of criteria for assessing and enhancing a publication’s impact potential. An article is argued to have greater influence if it changes many stakeholders’ understandings or behaviors on a relevant matter; and makes its message accessible by offering simple and clear findings and translating them into actionable implications. These drivers are operationalized as a checklist of criteria for authors, reviewers, and research supervisors who wish to evaluate and enhance a manuscript’s potential impact. This article invites scholars to further develop and promote these criteria and to participate in establishing impact evaluation as an institutionalized practice within marketing academia.</p

Being Innovative About Service Innovation: Service, Design and Digitalization

Moving beyond questions about “services” and “the services economy,” this panel considers fresh ways of thinking about service innovation in the era of pervasive digitization. Panelists will argue that our understanding of digital services and products is radically transformed if we consider all exchanges to be service-for-service exchanges in which customers and suppliers co-create value in exchange networks. Innovation can then be understood as the continual process of breaking down knowledge (information) and reintegrating it to create new knowledge-based resources. Pervasive digitalization and generative digital platforms are revolutionizing service exchange possibilities. Value exchanges nonetheless occur within contexts that are material and social, tangible and tacit. The dynamics of these dimensions of service exchange challenge our concepts and methods for designing for service. Representing different approaches and disciplines, panelists will share their views on how the IS field might rethink service innovation, design and digitalization