Journal of Service Science

IT (Information Technology) service providers have been making serious efforts for the success of numerous IT projects. For each project, they have been trying to satisfy expectations and requirements from stakeholders such as customers, partners, the project team, and so on. However, in reality, customers have perceived that IT services are late in delivery time, over budgeted, or of low quality, despite the providers’ efforts. LG CNS, an IT service provider, has innovated the internal service process by using HPT (Human Performance Technology), i.e. performance engineering. This case study reports how they identified problems and devised a way to alleviate the problems by analyzing the performance of IT service projects.

The objective of this study is to examine the strategic orientation of firms in the private passenger auto insurance sector, using the notion of strategic groups. Based on data from the period 2002 to 2007 from a sample of 53 insurers, this study found distinct strategic groups operating in this segment. Each of these groups has unique differences in their modes of operation. Accordingly, these groups are classified as Cost Leaders, Mid Tier Players, Geographic Niche Players, High Cost Niche Players, and Diversified Firms. However, despite the differences in strategic posture, these groups had comparable performance, indicating equifinality in operational modes. Study findings offer several insights to firms planning entry or operating in the private passenger segment of the property-casualty insurance industry.

The purpose of this study is to analyze consumer and worker attitudes towards consumer misbehavior in a service sector (restaurants and cafes), to determine the differences between consumers and workers, and to show the relationship of this phenomenon to demographical variables. It has found that consumers and workers are aware of the negative effects of consumer misbehavior on workers and other customers, as well as on service quality. Furthermore, consumers are aware of the fact that consumer misbehaviors can occur independently of the worker and that it would be the customers who suffer most from misbehaviors. This paper hardly finds the demographical variables that explain the different misbehaviors. These findings can be utilized in order to decrease consumer misbehaviors.

Much active research has been done on service science in order to improve productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction of IT service. If any software application or module in IT service behaves incorrectly, service quality and customer satisfaction will decrease significantly. In order to solve such problems, research on software assurance has been drawn much attention recently. Most widely recognized research has been carried out by various government agencies and research institutes such as DHS, DoD, NIST, NASA, SAFECode, CWE™, and SANS. This paper investigates various research on software assurance and discusses the unconsidered matters that have not been studied or solved yet. Finally, a system for the improved software assurance is proposed.

The history of any field of study is an important topic, but few authors have taken on the task of writing the history of service research since the early 1990s. We attempt to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive account on the general course of the service literature from 1993 to now. We propose an extension of the evolutionary metaphor originally proposed by Fisk et al. (1993). Drawing on an extensive multidisciplinary literature, we paint a portrait of the evolution of the service literature over three new stages termed Racing Ahead (1993–1999), Looking Back and Moving Forward (2000–2003), and Airborne (2004–Now). Within each era, we first identify key observations that make it distinguishable from the other stages, and then specifically highlight the major contributions that were made. We also underscore and provide some recommendations for further consideration by interested thinkers in the field for moving it forward.

The purpose of this study is to suggest strategic solutions for the growth and development of universities by establishing university development models which can reflect the reality of Korean universities. These models are determined by the domestic and international trends in structural reforms of universities as well as the government policy toward university specialization. In order to apply these university development models effectively as efficient and outcome-oriented systems, we have taken an analytical approach to the essential resources which universities possess. We suggest four development models which emphasize the education and research aspect of the universities. These four models are the knowledge-specific, the knowledge-expanding, the knowledge-learning, and finally the knowledge-replenishing model. The subsequent analysis of the efficiency of sixty Korean universities is used to verify the validity of each suggested development model.

Service Industry is the dominant sector of global economies. More efficient management and effective innovation of service industry may be a crucial competitiveness of a nation. Service science is an emerging discipline to combine engineering, computer science, and management. Service science means curricula, training, and research programs that are designed to teach individuals to apply scientific, engineering, and management disciplines that integrate elements of computer science, operations research, industrial engineering, business strategy, management sciences, and social and legal sciences. In this paper we will present an overview of service science for service innovation. First, service economy is explained in a comprehensive way from industry view to functional view. Advanced country’s policy on service innovation is introduced. And then the characteristics of service systems and service science are briefly analyzed. Some methods of service science for service innovation are to be introduced. And cases of service innovation will be presented.

In the globalized economy, companies compete on their value-added service offer. Japanese firms have a long tradition of outstanding manufacturing quality. However, the Japanese service industry is less developed in comparison with other OECD countries. Services have often been bundled together with products or internalized in manufacturing firms without separate visibility. We argue that this service bundling can be highly valuable in certain industries where there is a need to increase the service content. The paper uses the interface between product and package to show the potential strengths of the Japanese firms in terms of increasing value-added service in the value-chain. It offers a theoretical contribution to the discussion on the service economy and gives empirical examples from an industry in Japan.