Thinking about ServCollab and ISSIP

As part of my reading and thinking this morning, ServCollab was top of mind, and the scale of the grand challenge problems that community of practice is trying to tackle (service ecosystem health, climate change, refugee service experience, inclusion, etc.), as well as synergies and collaboration opportunities with the ISSIP community. For those interested, it is easy and free to join both ServCollab and ISSIP, since they are volunteer communities. As volunteer communities, my recommendation is to join while recalling what John F. Kennedy wisely said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Both the ServCollab and ISSIP as communities of practice focus on “service” as the central concept of human experience (HX) and connected to all aspects of business and societal interactions, change, and innovation. ServCollab as a service research community initiative has a focus on service design and action research methods to bring about change in wellbeing of people and planet. ISSIP as a professional association sponsored by companies has a focus on professional development and capability building of members on the topic of service innovations.

References

Badinelli R (2012) What do we mean by service? ISSIP website.

Boenigk S, Fisk R, Kabadayi S, Alkire L, Cheung L, Corus C, Finsterwalder J, Kreimer AA, Luca N, Omeira M, Paul P, Santos MF, Smidt N (2021) Rethinking service systems and public policy: a transformative refugee service experience framework. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 2021 Apr;40(2):165-83.

Fisk RP, Anderson L, Bowen DE, Gruber T, Ostrom A, Patrício L, Reynoso J, Sebastiani R (2016) Billions of impoverished people deserve to be better served: A call to action for the service research community. Journal of Service Management. 27(1): 43-55.

Fisk RP, Dean AM, Alkire L, Joubert A, Previte J, Robertson N, Rosenbaum MS (2018) Design for Service Inclusion: Creating Inclusive Service Systems by 2050. Journal of Service Management. 29(5):834-858.

Fisk R, Fuessel A, Laszlo C, Struebi P, Valera A, Weiss C (2019) Systemic social innovation: Co-creating a future where humans and all life thrive. Humanistic Management Journal. 4(2):191-214.

Fisk RP (2020) How Serving Each Other Can Save Humanity. TEDx Texas State University.

Fisk RP, Alkire L (2021) Service Ecosystem Health: A Transformative Approach to Elevating Service Science. Service Science 13(4):194-204.

Annotated References

Badinelli R (2012) What do we mean by service? ISSIP Website.

URL: https://issip.org/what-do-we-mean-by-service/

“The residue of outdated definitions of service have left many service professionals confused about the true nature of service and the broad range of disciplines that have an interest in this field. The definition of the word “service” has undergone a transformation within the last decade.” P. 1.

“Therefore, we define service as the application of knowledge to co-create value, and service science as the study of diverse, interconnected, complex “human-centered value-cocreation systems” in business and society.” P. 1.

“The global refugee crisis is a complex humanitarian problem. Service researchers can assist in solving this crisis because refugees are immersed in complex human service systems. Drawing on marketing, sociology, transformative service, and consumer research literature, this study develops a Transformative Refugee Service Experience Framework to enable researchers, service actors, and public policy makers to navigate the challenges faced throughout a refugee’s service journey. The primary dimensions of this framework encompass the spectrum from hostile to hospitable refugee service systems and the resulting suffering or well- being in refugees’ experiences. The authors conceptualize this at three refugee service journey phases (entry, transition, and exit) and at three refugee service system levels (macro, meso, and micro) of analysis. The framework is supported by brief examples from a range of service-related refugee contexts as well as a Web Appendix with additional cases. Moreover, the authors derive a comprehensive research agenda from the framework, with detailed research questions for public policy and (service) marketing researchers. Managerial directions are provided to increase awareness of refugee service problems; stimulate productive interactions; and improve collaboration among public and nonprofit organizations, private service providers, and refugees. Finally, this work provides a vision for creating hospitable refugee service systems.” P. 165.

“Second, research in several disciplines, such as philosophy (Sabine 1916), social sciences (Fixsen et al. 2013; Safouane 2017), economics (Carmeli 2007), law (Floss 2006), informa- tion and communication technology (Beghtol 2003; Muter et al. 1993), medicine, health care (Okie 2007; Simelela and Venter 2014), biological sciences (Miller and Bohannan 2019), and politics (McFadyen 2016; Silver, Keeper, and MacKenzie 2005), has taken a system view and discussed hospitable versus hostile systems.” P. 167.

“Restrictions such as legal, political, or resource constraints can prevent actors in the system from cocreating well-being with actors located in the same system, with those entering the system, or with actors outside the system (Kuppelwieser and Finsterwalder 2016). Certain political movements and ideologies that cite alleged risks to security due to the arrival of refugees might prevent them from entering in the first place (Osborne 2019). Derrida (2000) argues that restrictions change the pure nature of hospitality, such that systems might become hostile, at least in part, by imposing long waiting times for refugees to access services or be legally admitted to the new service system. This built- in “hostipitality” (Derrida 2000, p. 3) relates to “hospitality toward the undesirable guest,” and reflects the “fear of the other abusing the system (and the host state) [and] is resulting in stringent policies that are detrimentally impacting on those individuals seeking sanctuary” (McFadyen 2016, pp. 600, 614).” P. 172.

“Introduction: Poverty is truly a wicked problem with no easy solutions. Every country has large numbers of citizens trapped in poverty, which led the United Nations (2015) to boldly declare that ending poverty is their Number 1 Sustainable Development Goal. When so many people in so many countries live in multi-generational poverty, the service systems of human society are failing to deliver adequate basic services. Such basic service systems include health, education, public safety, transportation, energy, sanitation, and such life support services as food, water, and shelter. Poverty is difficult to reduce because the service systems of human society are complex and interrelated. Further, the poor are routinely the victims of crime and corruption, which makes their plight all the more tragic. Our service research community has the ability to help reduce poverty. There is no longer any excuse for hesitation or inaction. The time has come for our service research community to broaden its research efforts to include the service needs of the majority of humanity who are still trapped in poverty.” P.44.

“The BoP: service problems and opportunities: BoP has become the common description for the approximately two thirds of the world’s population who live on the equivalent of less than nine US Dollars per day (Arnold and Valentin, 2013). For these impoverished people, limited access to basic services and inadequate service systems leave them mired in poverty. These service problems include limited or no access to health care, education, transportation, and electricity; no sanitation; insufficient or poor quality food; no clean drinking water; and no adequate housing.” P. 45.

“Introduction: Unfair service systems have been common across human history and remain as such in many modern service experiences. Further, unfairness has been documented in every human society. This unfairness stems from customers often lacking access to services, systemic bias, customer vulnerability and discrimination during service interactions. This paper focuses on these forms of unfairness and labels them as “service exclusion.” Service exclusion occurs when services (service providers or service systems) deliberately or unintentionally fail to include or to adequately serve customers in a fair manner… This situation calls for urgent attention and action at all levels. To offset these problems, the authors propose the concept of “service inclusion,” which refers to an egalitarian system that provides customers (e.g. consumers, clients, patrons, citizens, patients and guests) with fair access to a service, fair treatment during a service and fair opportunity to exit a service. With this definition, the authors advance a criterion that represents a global service system standard for service relationships and interactions. The logic for this concept of service inclusion is founded on the understanding that the concept of universal human rights was invented in the eighteenth century (Hunt, 2007) and that it is steadily advancing.” P. 835.

Fisk R, Fuessel A, Laszlo C, Struebi P, Valera A, Weiss C (2019) Systemic social innovation: Co-creating a future where humans and all life thrive. Humanistic Management Journal. 4(2):191-214.

“Abstract: Society is at a crossroads. Interconnected systems, radical transparency, and rapidly increasing sophistication in skills, communications, and technologies provide a unique context for fostering social innovation at a planetary scale. We argue that unprece- dented rates of systemic social change are possible for co-creating a future where humans and all life can thrive. Yet, this requires innovation in the conceptions, practice, teaching, and researching of social innovation itself to reimagine what it is and can be. As a multidisciplinary group of academics, practitioners, and educators, we integrate our perspectives on social innovation and humanistic management to suggest the notion of systemic social innovation. We introduce the concept of “trans- formative collaboration” as central to facilitating systemic social innovation and propose a multilevel model for accelerating systems change. We then develop an integrated framework for conceptualizing systemic social innovation. Four levels of social impact are identified, and these levels are bracketed with a call for transforming individual consciousness at the micro level and new collective mindsets at the macro level. Blooom is presented as a case study to illustrate transformative collaboration, demonstrate the role of mindset shift in practice, and introduce four key ingredients to systemic social innovation. Finally, a call to action is issued for social innovation practice, teaching, and research. Most importantly, we seek to inspire and accelerate systemic social innovation that enables the flourishing of every human being and all life on earth.” P. 191.

“Transformative Collaboration: In this article, we propose that the highest form of collaboration should be called “transformative collaboration,” which occurs when all participants are able to make contributions at their full human potential. It is the liberation of human potential through collaboration that is transformative. We propose three key principles as central to the notion of transformative collaboration: equality and inclusion, personal consciousness, and creativity and innovation.” P. 199.

Fisk RP, Alkire L, Anderson L, Bowen DE, Gruber T, Ostrom AL, Patrício L (2020) Elevating the Human eXperience (HX) through Service Research Collaborations: Introducing ServCollab. Journal of Service Management. [online at lboro.ac.uk]
URL: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Elevating_the_human_experience_HX_through_service_research_collaborations_introducing_ServCollab/12116316/files/22282044.pdf

“As the service research field has evolved, our understanding of the nature of service has shifted from being peripheral to human experience (HX) to becoming central to HX. One aspect of this new centrality of service has been the expansion of research topics beyond dyadic service encounters (Bitner et al., 1990) to service systems (Maglio et al., 2009) and then to service ecosystems (Akaka and Vargo, 2015). A second aspect is the emergence of the transformative service research (TSR) movement, which has raised the aspirations of the service research field to improving human well-being (Anderson et al., 2013) and reducing its suffering (Nasr and Fisk, 2019). There is great power and potential in this new understanding of the central role of service in human life. Fundamentally, the centrality of service to HX means that the greatest potential of the service research field is yet to be explored and discovered. ServCollab was created to enable the service research field to elevate HX through service research collaborations.” P.616

“For the service research field to make major scientific advances and truly improve human well- being and reduce its suffering, it will require larger service research projects. Such projects will require that service researchers build large and inclusive project teams, sharpen their collaboration skills and hone their research tools for serving humanity. It will also require that service researchers create and share a service language that improves communication across the service research community (Fisk and Grove, 2010). Most importantly, it will require that service researchers develop service standards for properly serving humanity.” P. 616.

“What is ServCollab? ServCollab is a service research organization for diagnosing and treating humanity’s service system problems (poverty, ignorance, disease, etc.).” P. 616.

“Why focus on collaboration?
As a social species, human interactions are learned behaviors that are essential for human existence. Table 1 shows our conceptualization of four categories of human interaction: conflict, competition, cooperation and collaboration. Conflict and competition are common interactions that are chronicled widely in human history. Conflict starts as an argument but can escalate into a war. Competition refers to seeking the same resources through a rules- based contest. Both conflict and competition result in winners seeking dominance over the losers. Such dominance is associated with the origination of the word service. Service is derived from the Latin word “servus” (Merriam-Webster.com 2020), which means slave or servant.
Cooperation and collaboration have been less prominently chronicled by historians. Cooperation is participatory interaction but not always voluntary interaction. Cooperation can be coerced by law, by bullying or by physical force. As such, cooperation can lead to unequal and unjust outcomes, whereas one party could be benefiting at the expense of the other. Collaboration is distinguished by shared intentionality (Angus and Newton, 2015). Collaborative interactions occur when people eagerly engage in working with each other. Anthropologists (Tomasello et al., 2012) have characterized the evolution of our species in prehistoric times as mutualistic collaboration driven by interdependence. Such mutualistic collaboration began with the first service systems (families) and continued with the steady evolution in sophistication of human service systems from families, to tribes, to villages, to cities and to nations (Fisk, 2009; Fisk and Grove, 2010).” P. 617.

“Human experience (HX): a broader perspective on serving humanity
When Vargo and Lusch (2004) introduced service-dominant logic (S-D logic), it was a key milestone in the broadening of thinking about service. They argued that service is fundamental to all economic and social exchange. This launched many service researchers on a path of rethinking the foundations of the service research field, which included expanding from the original focus on service encounters (Bitner et al., 1990) to service systems (Maglio et al., 2009) and then to service ecosystems (Akaka and Vargo, 2015; Lusch and Vargo, 2014).”

“Designing new service solutions to serve humanity
Service design can be defined as a human-centered, holistic, creative and iterative approach to service innovation (Meroni and Sangiorgi, 2011), rooted in design as changing existing situations into preferred futures (Simon, 1969). ” P. 623.

“Service design takes a human-centered and participatory approach, designing for and with people, and can contribute to creating balanced solutions to uplift human service systems.
Designing for people involves a sensemaking approach, viewed as a social construction of meaning focused on understanding how people experience and understand the world around them and reflecting this sensemaking in the solutions being developed (Cipolla and Reynoso, 2017). Designing with people reflects a participatory approach where people are considered true experts in domains of experience such as living or working, and as such they are actively involved as cocreators in the design process, while the designer plays a facilitator role (Sanders, 2008). ” P. 623.

“Designing service for transformation. The action-oriented and participatory approach to service design can also generate transformative value for uplifting changes in individual and collective well-being (Blocker and Barrios, 2015). This transformative service design approach seeks to create not only new service solutions but also the platforms and capacities for ongoing and lasting change (Sangiorgi et al., 2019). Service design can, therefore, promote the change of ingrained norms, rules and beliefs of different system actors, such as fostering more human-centered and participatory approaches in health care and promoting ecosystem innovation through institutional change (Vink et al., 2019). ” P. 624.

“Action research: Action research seeks transformative change through simultaneously conducting research and seeking action. There are different types of action research, but most are enacted through an explicit set of social values that align with the principles of ServCollab. These values translate into a process of inquiry with the following characteristics:
(1) “Democratic – enabling the participation of all people.
(2) Equitable – acknowledging people’s equality of worth.
(3) Liberating – providing freedom from oppressive, debilitating conditions.
(4) Life enhancing – enabling the expression of people’s full human potential.” (Stringer, 1999, pp. 9–10).
Critical Participatory Action Research (Critical PAR) is an especially fitting type of action research, which Michelle Fine describes in her appropriately titled book, Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (2018a).” P.624.

“Community Advisory Boards (CABs) can provide a moral compass for some of the ethical dilemmas and issues raised by Critical PAR. CABs can be created for specific projects or they can become permanent entities for certain communities. CABs can assess risks and benefits to the community of study participation; power between community, academic and other collaborators; ownership of data; authorship; transparency; accountability; use of findings and by whom; among other issues (Guishard, 2015).
ServCollab seeks to support projects adopting service design and Critical PAR as research approaches. This support includes sharing expertise, organizing workshops, searching for funding, research access, following responsible research standards and avoiding research pitfalls.” P. 626.

Fisk RP (2020) How Serving Each Other Can Save Humanity. TEDx Texas State University.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V1qbry6aI
Different, but also see:
Grant H (2019) How To Ask For Help – And Get a “Yes”. TED Salon: Brightline Initiative.
URL: https://www.ted.com/talks/heidi_grant_how_to_ask_for_help_and_get_a_yes

Fisk RP, Alkire L (2021) Service Ecosystem Health: A Transformative Approach to Elevating Service Science. Service Science 13(4):194-204.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/serv.2021.0281

“Abstract. Events in the year 2020 threw human service systems into chaotic states, threat- ening peoples’ lives and livelihoods. Before 2020, there were many profound challenges to human life that had been well documented by efforts such as the United Nations Sustain- able Development Goals. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be a “last straw” crisis that has destabilized modern human civilization. This article diagnoses various crises of human service systems (e.g., COVID-19, inequality, and climate change) and proposes the meta- phor of service ecosystem health for reimagining service science in a postpandemic world. Service ecosystem health is defined as the interdependent state of private, public, and plan- etary well-being necessary for sustaining life. This article reimagines service science, broad- ens transformative service research, builds the service ecosystem health metaphor, outlines the Goldilocks Civilization thought experiment, and explores designing for a Goldilocks civilization. Because service is for humans, the ultimate objective is to elevate service sci- ence to uplift human well-being.” P. 194.

“We define service ecosystem health as the interde- pendent state of private, public, and planetary well- being necessary for sustaining life. The first section of this article discusses reimagining service science. The second section discusses broaden- ing transformative service research (TSR). The third section builds the service ecosystem health metaphor through an interdisciplinary overview of public health, syndemic theory, human ecology, ecosystem health, and planetary health literatures. The fourth section de- scribes a Goldilocks civilization thought experiment that imagines what harmonizing the complex service ecosystem interactions between humans and between nature and humans might require. The final section proposes a service ecosystem design approach for cre- ating service science collaborations sufficiently robust to tackle the challenges of prototyping Goldilocks civi- lization solutions for service ecosystem health.” P. 195.

“We believe that service scientists should be at the forefront in proposing and developing collaborative systematic service innovations on behalf of our imperiled human ecology.” P. 201.

World Bank (2013) Inclusion Matters : The Foundation for Shared Prosperity. New Frontiers of Social Policy. World Bank, Washington DC. [online at worldbank.org]

“Today, the world is at a conjuncture where issues of exclusion and inclusion are assuming new significance for both developed and developing countries. The imperative for social inclusion has blurred the distinction between these two stylized poles of development. Countries that used to be referred to as developed are grappling with issues of exclusion and inclusion perhaps more intensely today than they did a decade ago. And countries previously called developing are grappling with both old issues and new forms of exclusion thrown up by growth.”