Reframing the relationship between service design and operations: a service engineering approach

摘要

The significance of services as business and human activities has increased dramaticallythroughout the world in the last three decades. Becoming a more and more competitiveand efficient service provider while still being able to provide unique value opportunitiesfor customers requires new knowledge and ideas. Part of this knowledge is created andutilized in daily activities in every service organization, but not all of it, and therefore anemerging phenomenon in the service context is information awareness. Terms like bigdata and Internet of things are not only modern buzz-words but they are also describingurgent requirements for a new type of competences and solutions. When the amount ofinformation increases and the systems processing information become more efficient andintelligent, it is the human understanding and objectives that may get separated from theautomated processes and technological innovations. This is an important challenge andthe core driver for this dissertation: What kind of information is created, possessed andutilized in the service context, and even more importantly, what information exists but isnot acknowledged or used?In this dissertation the focus is on the relationship between service design and serviceoperations. Reframing this relationship refers to viewing the service system from thearchitectural perspective. The selected perspective allows analysing the relationshipbetween design activities and operational activities as an information system whilemaintaining the tight connection to existing service research contributions andapproaches. This type of an innovative approach is supported by research methodologythat relies on design science theory. The methodological process supports the constructionof a new design artifact based on existing theoretical knowledge, creation of newinnovations and testing the design artifact components in real service contexts. The relationship between design and operations is analysed in the health care and social careservice systems.The existing contributions in service research tend to abstract services and servicesystems as value creation, working or interactive systems. This dissertation adds animportant information processing system perspective to the research. The maincontribution focuses on the following argument: Only part of the service informationsystem is automated and computerized, whereas a significant part of informationprocessing is embedded in human activities, communication and ad-hoc reactions. Theresults indicate that the relationship between service design and service operations ismore complex and dynamic than the existing scientific and managerial models tend toview it. Both activities create, utilize, mix and share information, making serviceinformation management a necessary but relatively unknown managerial task.On the architectural level, service system -specific elements seem to disappear, but accessto more general information elements and processes can be found. While this dissertationfocuses on conceptual-level design artifact construction, the results provide also verypractical implications for service providers. Personal, visual and hidden activities ofservice, and more importantly all changes that take place in any service system have alsoan information dimension. Making this information dimension visual and prioritizing theprocessed information based on service dimensions is likely to provide new opportunitiesto increase activities and provide a new type of service potential for customers.