The document discusses different perspectives on defining and understanding services. It provides definitions of services from various sources that describe services as capabilities to perform tasks, outputs produced to order to fulfill consumer needs, and the provision of value from one party to another. It also discusses services in terms of abstraction, restricted access to resources through a service rather than ownership, and co-creation of value between provider and customer.

1. Unified Service Theory and Perspectives on Services Study Circle in Service Systems

4. Unified Service Theory ” Services are production processes wherein each customer supplies one or more input components for that customer’s unit of production. With non-service processes, groups of customers may contribute ideas to the design of the prodct, but individual customers’ only participation is to select, pay for, and consume the output.” Scott E. Sampson, ”The Unified Service Theory” in Handbook of Service Science , ed. P. Maglio et al., Springer, 2010

5. A Non-service Process Actor Process Input Output

6. A Service Process Provider Customer Service process Input Output

7. Sources of Heterogeneity Provider Customer Service process Input Output Variability in provider input Variability in customer input

8. Perishability Provider Customer Service process Input Output ? ?

9. Management Applications Service development: handling variability in customer input, robust processes Service innovation: finding new roles for customers in service processes

10. Are Services Processes? Sometimes we talk of services as resources: ” Our company offers car washing services”

11. Strengths of Services A service consumer does not own a service. She does not need to take on typical ownership responsibilities, like infrastructure management, integration, and maintenance. She can focus on how to make use of the service for her specific business. Taxi Service Customer Encapsulated resources

12. A Motivating Problem You have bought a snow ploughing service for the winter, saying that whenever more than five cm snow has fallen, your street will be ploughed

13. A Motivating Problem You have bought a snow ploughing service for the winter, saying that whenever more than five cm snow has fallen, your street will be ploughed However, it never snows this winter Has the service been delivered?

14. Value Modelling and REA REA Ontology: modelling exchanges and conversions of resources Resource – an object viewed as valuable by some agent Event – exchange of resources or conversion of resources Agent – a legal entity that controls resources and performs events

15. Exchanging Resources Agent Agent Resource Resource

16. Exchanging Resources Agent Agent Resource Resource Events exchanging resources

17. Converting Resources Resource Resource

18. Converting Resources Resource Resource Resource Events converting resources

19. REA Conceptual Model

20. REA Conceptual Model The stockflow tells how an economic event affects a resource

21. REA Conceptual Model The stockflow tells how an economic event affects a resource A process is a set of economic events

25. Hohfeldt’s Classification of Rights Claim One actor has a claim on another actor if the second actor is required to act in a certain way for the benefit of the first actor

26. Hohfeldt’s Classification of Rights Claim One actor has a claim on another actor if the second actor is required to act in a certain way for the benefit of the first actor Privilege An actor has a privilege on an action if she is free to carry out that action without any interference from the environment

27. Hohfeldt’s Classification of Rights Claim One actor has a claim on another actor if the second actor is required to act in a certain way for the benefit of the first actor Privilege An actor has a privilege on an action if she is free to carry out that action without any interference from the environment Power A power is the ability of an actor to create or modify social or legal relationships

28. Hohfeldt’s Classification of Rights Claim One actor has a claim on another actor if the second actor is required to act in a certain way for the benefit of the first actor Privilege An actor has a privilege on an action if she is free to carry out that action without any interference from the environment Power A power is the ability of an actor to create or modify social or legal relationships Immunity An immunity refers to the restriction of power of one actor in terms of creating relationships on behalf of another actor

29. Three Perspectives on Services Abstraction – focus on the use of resources Restricted access – accessing resources without owning them Co-creation – supplier and customer create value together

30. Service for Abstraction Goods are concrete resources having properties like weight, volume, and colour Service resources are abstract in the sense that they are defined only through the benefits they can bring A service resource is defined through the process in which it can be used

31. Service for Abstraction A laundry service is defined in terms of the effects it has on clothes – making them clean A laundry service may be based on different resource sets: {washing machines, synthetic detergent} {water tank, soap, labour}

32. Service for Abstraction

33. Service for Abstraction A service resource is defined through the process in which it can be used

34. Service for Abstraction A capability is like a service resource but can be used in many processes

35. Service for Abstraction Restrictions are used to constrain the resources a capability is based on

40. Service for Restricted Access

41. From Offering to Commitment When an offering is accepted, a commitment is created

42. From Offering to Commitment How are the different kinds of commitments fulfilled? An ownership/loan commitment is fulfilled by giving rights

43. From Offering to Commitment How are the different kinds of commitments fulfilled? A service commitment is fulfilled by a service delivery that consumes a service resource

44. From Offering to Commitment How are the different kinds of commitments fulfilled? Triggers are used to specify any type of condition under which a Service Commitment becomes active

45. The Snow Ploughing Case How are the different kinds of commitments fulfilled? There is never any service delivery

46. The Snow Ploughing Case How are the different kinds of commitments fulfilled? There is never any service delivery But the service commitment is honoured because the trigger never fires

47. Service for Co-creation of Value Goods are produced internally at a provider who later on sells the goods to a customer who uses them without the involvement of the provider Service deliveries are usually parts of processes where value is co-created in an interaction between provider and recipient The recipient provides some of his resources as input to the process

48. Service for Co-creation of Value

49. Concluding Remarks Three aspects on services Abstraction Restricted access Co-creation of value Captures the basics of several service analyses in the literature A basis for service descriptions