Special Section call for papers: Journal of Service Management & GMC 2020
Living and Working with (Ro)bots – The Impact of (Ro)Bots on the Service Frontline
New Deadline
Full Paper Deadline: October 31st, 2020
Open call
Guest-Editors & Track Chairs:
Werner Kunz (University of Massachusetts Boston)
Arne De Keyser (EDHEC Business School)
According to many academics and practitioners, we are on the verge an artificially intelligent (AI) age (Huang and Rust 2018). New technologies are rapidly transforming virtually every aspect of our private and work lives. Already today, service interactions are significantly influenced by algorithms and the integration and usage of service (ro)bots is increasingly growing (Teixeira et al., 2017; van Doorn et al., 2017). Especially exciting are the opportunities offered by the integration of physical robots and/or virtual bots in service delivery (Čaić et al. 2018; De Keyser et al. 2019; Wirtz et al. 2018). These interact with their human counterparts in their daily routines at home, school, and in the workplace, and are there to assist in various ways (e.g., personal assistants like Alexa and Siri). Such (ro)bots are expected to impact a variety of service industries, most importantly education, healthcare, elderly care, hospitality, and retail (KPMG 2016). A recent study by IBM predicts that 85 % of all customer-firm-interactions will be conducted without human intervention by 2020 (IBM, 2017)
Despite all big promises and crazy scenarios in the popular press, robotics science is still a relatively young discipline, and many (ro)bots are still in a prototype phase. Nonetheless, the field is advancing at a rapid pace, raising the need to better understand the role of (ro)bots in service delivery, the reaction and usage by customers and (frontline) employees, as well as guiding principles for the development and design of service (ro)bots. For sure, the service discipline can and should contribute to this discussion, ensuring the development of technology fitting various service industries and contexts. At the same, the new opportunities offered by (ro)bot advancement do not only offer advantages for users and society in general. Many ethical and societal questions surrounding (ro)bot-delivered service become evident at the individual, market, and environmental levels, and should also be addressed by service researchers.
Research topics that are of interest
This special section aims to contribute to the new research field of service (ro)bots and their impact on customer/employee experience and society at large. Submissions can be conceptual or empirical (quantitative or qualitative) in nature. The topics can be approached from a customer/employee or business perspective or both. We highly value interdisciplinary approaches. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- The dark side of service (ro)bots
- The role of anthropomorphism
- (Ro)bot adoption
- Ethical issues related to service (ro)bots
- New theories and concepts for service (ro)bots
- Value co-creation with service (ro)bots
- Cross cultural challenges of service (ro)bots
- The role of touch versus tech in the service delivery with (ro)bots.
- System approach of service (ro)bots
- Customer experience in service (ro)bot settings
- Service (ro)bots as interaction partners
- Smart devices and the Internet of things
- Interplay of IoT and (ro)bots in service settings
- Interplay of smart services and service (ro)bots
- Interplay of Augmented and Virtual Reality and service (ro)bots.
- Big Data and service (ro)bots
- Cloud computing and service (ro)bots
- The role of service (ro)bots during the customer journey
- The role of service (ro)bots for service branding
- The interaction of service employees and (ro)bots
Specific research questions that are of interest may be found (among others) in these articles:
De Keyser, A., Köcher, S., Alkire (née Nasr), L., Verbeeck, C. and Kandampully, J. (2019), “Frontline Service Technology infusion: Conceptual Archetypes and Future Research directions”, Journal of Service Management, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 156-183.
Robinson, S., Orsingher, C., Alkire (née Nasr), L., De Keyser, A., Giebelhausen, M., Papmichaeil, K. N., Shams, P. and Temerak M. S. (2019), “Frontline Encounters of the AI Kind: An Evolved Service Encounter”, Journal of Business Research, forthcoming.
Wirtz, J., Patterson, P., Kunz, W., Gruber, T., Lu, V. N., & Paluch, S. (2018). Brave New World: Service Robots in The Frontline. Journal of Service Management, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 907-931.
Submission
Submission is open to all papers (and it is not necessary to part of the special track on GMC 2020). All manuscripts submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or be currently under consideration elsewhere.
Full paper submission deadline: Oct. 31st, 2020
Authors should submit their full papers through the journal website submission system
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/josm
and
should clealry phrase in the cover letter that this is a submission for the JOSM special section on ‘Living and Working with (Ro)bots – The Impact of (Ro)bots on the Service Frontline’.
Manuscripts should be submitted in accordance with the author guidelines available on the journal home page at
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=josm
Expected publication: Volume 31 (Issue 1) 2022
Please direct any further inquiries to the editors, listed below.
Guest Editor Contact Details
Dr. Werner Kunz
Digital Media Lab
University of Massachusetts Boston
Werner.Kunz@umb.edu
Dr. Arne De Keyser
EDHEC Business School
arne.dekeyser@edhec.edu
References:
Čaić, M., Odekerken-Schröder, G. and Mahr, D. (2018), “Service robots: value co-creation and co-destruction in elderly care networks”, Journal of Service Management, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 178–205.
De Keyser, A., Köcher, S., Alkire (née Nasr), L., Verbeeck, C. and Kandampully, J. (2019), “Frontline Service Technology infusion: Conceptual Archetypes and Future Research directions”, Journal of Service Management, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 156-183.
Huang, M.-H. and Rust, R.T. (2018), “Artificial Intelligence in Service”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 155–172.
IBM. (2017), “10 reasons why AI-powered, automated customer service is the future”, available at: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2017/10/10-reasons-ai-powered-automated-customer-service-future/ (accessed November 2019).
Robinson, S., Orsingher, C., Alkire (née Nasr), L., De Keyser, A., Giebelhausen, M., Papmichaeil, K. N., Shams, P. and Temerak M. S. (2019), “Frontline Encounters of the AI Kind: An Evolved Service Encounter”, Journal of Business Research, forthcoming.
Teixeira, J. G., Patrício, L., Huang, K. H., Fisk, R. P., Nóbrega, L. and Constantine, L. (2017), “The MINDS Method: Integrating Management and Interaction Design Perspectives For Service Design”, Journal Of Service Research, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 240–258.
van Doorn, J., Mende, M., Noble, S.M., Hulland, J., Ostrom, A.L., Grewal, D. and Petersen, J.A. (2017), “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto: Emergence of Automated Social Presence in Organizational Frontlines and Customers’ Service Experiences”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 43–58.
Wirtz, J., Patterson, P., Kunz, W., Gruber, T., Lu, V. N., & Paluch, S. (2018). Brave New World: Service Robots in The Frontline. Journal of Service Management, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 907-931.
