Marianna Sigala and Chatura Ranaweera, co-editors of the Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP) are very pleased to announce and congratulate the winners of the best paper award, and the three highly commended papers, as well as the two best reviewers, 2020. We join them in congratulating the winners and recognising their contribution to the service field.
JSTP usually presents the awards at a major service research conference. However, this year due to the pandemic, the awards will be presented during SERVSIG’s virtual Award Ceremony on June 11th, 2021.
Best Paper Award
Lu, V.N., Wirtz, J., Kunz, W.H., Paluch, S., Gruber, T., Martins, A. and Patterson, P.G. (2020), “Service robots, customers and service employees: what can we learn from the academic literature and where are the gaps?”
https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-04-2019-0088
Robots are predicted to have a profound impact on the service sector. The emergence of robots has attracted increasing interest from business scholars and practitioners alike. In this article, we undertake a systematic review of the business literature about the impact of service robots on customers and employees with the objective of guiding future research.
We analyzed the literature on service robots as they relate to customers and employees in business journals listed in the Financial Times top 50 journals plus all journals covered in the cross-disciplinary SERVSIG literature alerts.
The analysis of the identified studies yielded multiple observations about the impact of service robots on customers (e.g. overarching frameworks on acceptance and usage of service robots; characteristics of service robots and anthropomorphism; and potential for enhanced and deteriorated service experiences) and service employees (e.g. employee benefits such as reduced routine work, enhanced productivity and job satisfaction; potential negative consequences such as loss of autonomy and a range of negative psychological outcomes; opportunities for human–robot collaboration; job insecurity; and robot-related up-skilling and development requirements). We also conclude that current research on service robots is fragmented, is largely conceptual in nature and focused on the initial adoption stage. We feel that more research is needed to build an overarching theory. In addition, more empirical research is needed, especially on the long(er)-term usage service robots on actual behaviors, the well-being and potential downsides and (ethical) risks for customers and service employees.
Our review focused on the business and service literature. Future work may want to include additional literature streams, including those in computer science, engineering and information systems.
This article is the first to synthesize the business and service literature on the impact of service robots on customers and employees.
Highly Commended Papers
Medberg, G. and Grönroos, C. (2020), “Value-in-use and service quality: do customers see a difference?”
https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-09-2019-0207
The definition of value adopted by the current service perspective on marketing theory is value as value-in-use. Surprisingly, however, little attention has been given to the question of what constitutes value-in-use for customers in service contexts? Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide an empirical account of value-in-use from service customers’ point of view.
To capture and analyze customers’ experiences of value-in-use in the typical service context of retail banking, this study employed a narrative-based critical incident technique (CIT) and a graphical tool called the value chart.
The study identified seven empirical dimensions of positive and negative value-in-use: solution, attitude, convenience, expertise, speed of service, flexibility and monetary costs. Interestingly, these value-in-use dimensions overlap considerably with previously identified dimensions of service quality.
The concepts of service quality and value-in-use in service contexts seem to represent the same empirical phenomenon despite their different theoretical traditions. Measuring customer-perceived service quality might therefore be a good proxy for assessing value-in-use in service contexts.
As the findings indicate that service quality is the way in which service customers experience value-in-use, service managers are recommended to focus on continuous quality management to facilitate the creation of value-in-use.
This study is the first to explicitly raise the notion that in the minds of service customers, value defined as value-in-use and service quality may represent the same empirical phenomenon.
Koskela-Huotari, K. and Siltaloppi, J. (2020), “Rethinking the actor in service research: toward a processual view of identity dynamics”
https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-11-2018-0245
Only a few concepts in the service literature are as pervasive yet as undertheorized as is the concept of the actor. With a growing interest toward value creation as a systemic and institutionally guided phenomenon, there is a particular need for a more robust conceptualization of humans as actors that adopts a processual, as opposed to a static, view. The purpose of this paper is to build such processual conceptualization to advance service-dominant (S-D) logic, in particular, and service research, in general.
The paper is conceptual and extends S-D logic’s institutionally constituted account of the actor by drawing from identity theory and social constructionism.
The paper develops a processual conceptualization of the human actor that explicates four social processes explaining the dynamics between two identity concepts—social and personal identity—and institutional arrangements. The resulting framework reveals how humans are simultaneously constituted by institutions and able to perform their roles in varying, even institution-changing, ways.
By introducing new insights from identity theory and social constructionism, this paper reconciles the dualism in S-D logic’s current description of actors, as well as posits the understanding of identity dynamics and the processual nature of actors as central in many service-related phenomena.
This paper is among the few that explicitly theorize about the nature of human actors in S-D logic and the service literature.
Virlée, J.B., Hammedi, W. and van Riel, A.C.R. (2020), “Healthcare service users as resource integrators: investigating factors influencing the co-creation of value at individual, dyadic and systemic levels”
https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-07-2019-0154
Patients, when using healthcare services, (co)create value by integrating their own resources with those of a range of stakeholders. These resource integration activities, however, require different types of skills and effort from the patients, and different types of interactions with stakeholders, while also having different effects on patients’ well-being. The purpose of the present study is to develop a better understanding of why some patients are better able or willing to perform resource integration activities that impact their well-being. To reach this objective, barriers and facilitators of these activities in their interactions with various stakeholders were identified.
The study uses a multiple case study design. Individual patients having received a lung transplant, together with their entourage (family, medical professionals, other patients) each represent a case. In-depth interviews were conducted with the patients and with various categories of stakeholders in their service delivery network who were relevant to their experience and with whom they integrated their resources.
The study identifies three levels on which barriers and facilitators of the resource integration process occur: the individual, relational and systemic level. Factors on these levels affect different aspects of the process.
This study takes a systems perspective and investigates how various systemic factors and stakeholders conduce or inhibit healthcare service users to perform resource integration activities, especially focusing on those activities that strongly affect their well-being.
Best Reviewers
- Allard van Riel, Hasselt University, Belgium.
- Bodo Lang, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
- Jorge Grenha Teixeira, University of Porto, Portugal.
Previous JSTP Awards
– 2016
– 2017
– 2018
– 2019
