What is a Service: The Case of International Linen Service

摘要

This paper discusses the issue of what is a service? This is not simply a question of semantics for the field or discipline of service management is fast emerging as a major growth area in academic research, see for example the specialist service journals and conferences and IBM’s service science initiative. For policy makers too the issues are central to an economy for in many developed economies services account for 70-80% of GDP. The core issue for Operations Management researchers is whether our methods, typically developed from manufacturing can provide insights into managing services or to use the term preferred by marketing researchers; service. The research reported here examines a case study from the laundry industry; International Linen Service (ILS). Over the last 20 years ILS has successfully changed its business model, yet paradoxically it may have become less like a service. We analyse the case using two standard definitions of a service; rental access paradigm and significant customer input. We conclude by recognizing that both definitions provide significant insights that may help Operations Managers and that rather than considering them as contending definitions we ought to simply accept that no one definition provides all the insights necessary for operations managers providing a service.