Services as Activities: Towards a Unified Definition for (Public) Services (original) (raw)

Contribution to the Definition and Modeling of Service and Service Activities

Advances in Production Management Systems …, 2010

For a long time, it was highlighted that the service is intangible or immaterial; these characteristics are mainly used to distinguish the service, making it incomparable with good. The set of proposed definitions and characteristics that led to debates between specialists in economics for several years and gave place to a variety of visions and approaches are still not consensual and science engineers challenge. Goal of this paper is to present, on the one hand, the existing literature proposed by economists concerning services (definitions and specificities) and, on the other, arguments proposed by science engineers that challenge them. That study allows us to propose a generic definition of what a service is and a preliminary model of a service activity.

Toward a public service management: past, present, and future directions

Journal of Service Management

Purpose In providing a fine-grained analysis of public service management, the purpose of this paper is to make an important contribution to furthering research in service management, a body of literature that has tended to regard public services as homogenous or to neglect the context altogether. Design/methodology/approach Integrating public management and service management literatures, the past and present of public service management are discussed. Future directions for the field are outlined drawing on a service-dominant approach that has the potential to transform public services. Invited commentaries augment the review. Findings The review presents the Public Service Network Framework to capture the public value network in its abstraction and conceptualizes how value is created in public services. The study identifies current shortcomings in the field and offers a series of directions for future research where service management theory can contribute greatly. Research limita...

The Many Uses of the "Public Service" Concept (1999)

Nordicom Review 20(1): 5-12. , 1999

Intensified media competition has led to an inflation in the use of the concept of public service with respect to radio and television services. From once having been of primarily historical significance, public service became a key concept in the regulation of publicly and privately owned radio and television channels in the 1990s. By attaching concrete and significant privi-leges to the status of "public service broadcaster” without specifying what they mean by the term, authorities have elicited a battle of rhetoric, the winners of which are awarded gilt-edged concessions, a share of licence fee revenues, and politicians’ blessing. In such a situation it may be interesting to go back and examine the origins of the concept and ask: Is there any meaning left, or has the concept been so perverted that it nowadays can be used as an apology for just about anything?

New Public Service Development: Identifying Elements of Process Model

2015

Nowadays public services are challenged in number of ways. The transformation of societies, technological innovations, and budgetary pressures force the governments to be more efficient, reduce costs, improve the quality of decision-making, promote greater trust in public organisations, and tackle the higher expectations of modern citizens or businesses. Under these conditions, it is critical to search for new innovative models of new service development in the public sector, and methods that turn ideas and insights into viable offers to the citizens or business. The aim, in the first part of the article, is to analyse the theoretical background for new service development and innovation processes. The second part examines the new approaches to public services development that emerge as paradigm shifts in modern societies. Lastly, the article engages to identify the major elements that aggregates the new service design process in the public sector, unpack their dimensions, and clari...

Towards a public service management: Past, present, and future directions

Journal of Service Management, 2017

Purpose In providing a fine-grained analysis of public service management, the purpose of this paper is to make an important contribution to furthering research in service management, a body of literature that has tended to regard public services as homogenous or to neglect the context altogether. Design/methodology/approach Integrating public management and service management literatures, the past and present of public service management are discussed. Future directions for the field are outlined drawing on a service-dominant approach that has the potential to transform public services. Invited commentaries augment the review. Findings The review presents the Public Service Network Framework to capture the public value network in its abstraction and conceptualizes how value is created in public services. The study identifies current shortcomings in the field and offers a series of directions for future research where service management theory can contribute greatly. Research limitations/implications The review encourages service management research to examine the dynamic, diverse, and complex nature of public services and to recognize the importance of this context. The review calls for an interdisciplinary public service management community to develop, and to assist public managers in leveraging service logic. Originality/value The review positions service research in the public sector, makes explicit the role of complex networks in value creation, argues for wider engagement with public service management, and offers future research directions to advance public service management research.

The SERVICE Framework: A Public-service-dominant Approach to Sustainable Public Services

British Journal of Management, 2015

In this paper we argue that the new public management has been a flawed paradigm for public services delivery that has produced very internally efficient but externally ineffective public service organizations. Subsequently we develop the SERVICE framework for sustainable public services and public service organizations. This framework is rooted within the public-service-dominant business logic and emphasizes the need for a focus on external value creation rather than internal efficiency alone.

Constructing Public Services – European Approach

European Integration Studies, 2014

Our research aim is to study how the new service-oriented approach is socially constructed in the practices of public services and which role identity formulation plays in the construction process. From the service science point of view, we present three different generations of service thinking. The differences between these generations lie in the nature of services and in the ways in which the service system should be developed, and what kind of learning processes each service reform contains. Third generation services are constantly developing interactive processes where learning is based on local knowledge and experiences. They follow the logic of open systems theory. Our second task is to present the conceptual framework for understanding public services as knowledge creation processes. Our empirical task is to do a qualitative analysis based on a sample of interviews among social and health service managers and experts in four European cities (Barcelona, Den Bosch, Glasgow, Greater London area). The focus is in the importance of identity: how it develops in the service reform processes. The key results in qualitative analysis show that interviewees stress identity being one of the key elements developing in new process-like services where professional approach is integrated with knowledge of clients and communities. Street level bureaucrats´ open approach in connection with active role of service users results to unique solutions in service delivery. Shared identity developed in a reform process constitutes a key element in this kind of public services.