Special section in Journal of Service Management (JoSM)
Service through Corona and beyond: Implications for service research and practice
Guest Editors: V. Kuppelwieser and J. Finsterwalder
Deadline (250-w. abstract): 10 April 2020
The Corona-Virus is influencing our daily life. Most of us are locked down and can no longer participate in our normal daily activities and social life. Because of this pandemic, consumers quickly found new ways of dealing with this new reality and its restraints. Some have started running errands for elderly neighbors, others have commenced feeding the poor and providing shelter, or are simply socializing with people over the phone. Service employees have been hit the hardest and many are pondering how to reinvent themselves and put their service skills to use in different settings.
Service researchers observe such situations from a different persepctive. While traditional services are altered or completely stopped (airlines, retailing, or even haircuts), other services are emerging, many of those have moved either online or are now provided at a customer-to- customer level.
In light of this unique worldwide situation, the Journal of Service Management (JoSM) calls for a special section to discuss the service insights, research needs, and novel findings resulting from this crisis. We therefore invite researchers and managers to contribute to our special section on “Service through Corona and beyond: Implications for service research and practice”.
We are interested in a broad variety of topics that can enhance critical thinking in service research and management. Examples of topics include, but are not limited to:
– Why did the major lockdown happen? Are services guilty of fostering the dispersion of the virus? What are the consequences of lockdowns on the future of services?
– What can be done? Are services a solution to the crisis? What needs to change? What do we observe, especially in light of transformative service research focus on wellbeing? How do we apply our service knowledge in these situations? What do we recommend to service researchers and practitioners?
– What can we learn from this situation? What is the impact on our research? How should we change our approaches, our theoretical frameworks, our teaching, our thinking? Do we need to re-focus our definition of service consumers as we discuss to leave parts of the society behind?
The particular requirements of this special section are:
– All manuscripts are required to have theoretical foundations, similar to a regular academic paper, but do not have to develop a theory.
– The manuscripts’ length is limited to 3,000 to 4,000 words (excl. references, but including tables, figures, appendices etc.).
– The manuscripts can be conceptual/theoretical (as a summary, application to the crisis, call for research, research agenda), quantitative / qualitative, or methodological (with emphasis on the crisis).
The review and publication process will be expedited to allow the dissemination of the research papers during the crisis, not months later. All submissions will follow a double-blind review process.
– Initially we ask for submission of a 250-word abstract by April 10 at the latest.
– The special section editors will only invite full manuscripts when it is likely that they contribute satisfactorily to the theme of the special section and are methodologically sound.
– Once invited the authors should submit their full manuscripts by April 27. The manuscripts will then go out for double-blind reviews.
– We will provide feedback to the authors by May 15 and ask the authors to revise their manuscript by May 28.
– The special section editors will make final decisions on the manuscript in coordination with the journal editor.
When submitting a paper, the authors agree on reviewing for the special section and meet the above deadlines (no extensions will be possible).
Please submit your abstracts by April 10 to Prof. Volker Kuppelwieser (volker.kuppelwieser@neoma-bs.fr) and Assoc.-Prof. Jörg Finsterwalder (joerg.finsterwalder@canterbury.ac.nz).
