{"id":9422,"date":"2020-03-19T23:29:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T03:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/?p=9422"},"modified":"2020-04-15T01:36:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T05:36:35","slug":"a-call-to-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/a-call-to-service\/","title":{"rendered":"A Call to Service"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Raymond Fisk<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The COVID-19 Pandemic is rippling across our Planet and compelling us to hunker down at home. The new public health mantra of \u201csocial distancing\u201d is the opposite of normal human interactions for our very social species. While we struggle with this isolation, at least we have the Internet to bring us together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we\nponder this new isolated reality, I think our service research community should\nbegin discussing what we can do to reduce massive public health problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course,\nwe do not work in health care like medical doctors, nurses, and the many other\nhealth care staff at the nexus of treating this public health care crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless,\nas the World\nHealth Organization<\/a>\u2018s\nDirector-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recently said \u201cWe\u2019re all in this\ntogether.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what\ncan we do? As the founder of SERVSIG, I have been thrilled to witness the\ngrowth of our service research community across our 27-year history. This\ngrowth occurred because we helped each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we work\ntogether, our service research community is large enough now to help solve public\nhealth problems. We can and should rise to the occasion!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are\nthree recommendations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broadening\nOur Thinking About Service <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the discipline of marketing, the service discipline has steadily broadened its thinking. As this broadening has occurred, we have expanded our perspective from service encounters, to service systems, and to service ecosystems. The transformative service research movement has broadened our perspective on the outcomes of our efforts to improve human wellbeing. This shift in perspective is moving our service discipline from the periphery of human life to the center of human life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a\nforthcoming article with Linda Alkire, Laurie Anderson, David Bowen, Thorsten\nGruber, Amy Ostrom, and Lia Patricio, we propose the concept of human\nexperience (HX) rather than our more specific service research concepts of\ncustomer experience or employee experience. In short, we should reframe our thinking\ntoward a human logic focused on the full spectrum of human life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we\nfully absorb the meaning of \u201cimproving human wellbeing,\u201d then we should view\nservice systems as public health systems. Our species lives in nested service\nsystems of ever-growing complexity. When these service systems malfunction, the\nmalfunctions ripple across the systems and result in \u201cwicked\u201d problems that are\ndifficult to solve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the\nmost wicked of service system problems is the profound social exclusion that\ncharacterizes so many modern human societies. Social exclusion is the root of the\neconomic inequality, illiteracy, poverty, and crime that are common around the\nworld. These are public health diseases, just like health diseases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact\nthat inequality is common in our service systems today is not a flaw in our\nhuman nature. Inequality is a flaw in the design of the service systems. The\nbureaucracies that manage service systems were designed by and for the powerful.\nInequality was a key design goal. Inequality has a long history in service\nsystems. The systems of emperors, enslavement, aristocracies, feudalism,\ncolonialism were designed for inequality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a\nrecent article with Alison Dean, Linda Alkire, Alison Joubert, Josephine\nPrevite, Nichola Robertson, and Mark Rosenbaum, we argued that \u201cService\ninclusion should be a moral imperative for service organizations, systems and\nnation-states.\u201d (p. 851). The service systems of the world tend to ignore,\nneglect, or poorly service the most vulnerable humans, which includes women,\nminorities, the poor, and refugees. Service systems should be designed to\ninclude the full circle of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating\nNew Service Research Collaborations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of you already know that I announced in 2018 that I had begun creating ServCollab. The name ServCollab is a contraction of “Serv<\/strong>ing Humanity Through Collab<\/strong>oration.\u201d\u00a0 ServCollab is still in its infancy, but the need for large scale service research collaboration is great. Like SERVSIG, ServCollab is a volunteer-driven organization. You can get involved with ServCollab through our web site – https:\/\/www.servcollab.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an independent and unfettered entity, ServCollab\nseeks to build the collaborative capacity of the service research community by\ncollaborating with service researchers, with service research centers at\nuniversities, with service conferences, and with SERVSIG. ServCollab advocates service\ndesign and action research for reducing human suffering and improving human\nwellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ServCollab\nwill help train and mentor research collaborators. ServCollab will also seek research\npartnerships with nonprofit and profit seeking organizations and seek research\nfunding from nonprofit foundations. ServCollab will also seek new forms of\ninclusive collaboration that go beyond our own service discipline to include\nany disciplines that are human facing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ServCollab\nis interested in encouraging large scale service research collaborations that\nseek to reduce the root causes of human inequality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building\nPublic Impact<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently,\nour service discipline has little public policy impact. We can see service\nsystem problems that other disciplines with much more public policy influence\ncannot see, but we are not being seen by the public policy officials. How can we\nget the attention and respect of public policy officials so that we can push\nfor changes in public policy that focus on fully serving human needs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our service discipline still has only a modest impact on higher-level business policies. Too many businesses are more focused on serving their stockholders than their customers and employees. Such businesses are prone to impoverish their workers and underserve their customers. How can we change that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since most\nof us work for business schools, we need to push for changes in business school\ncurriculums so that business school graduates understand the importance of\nserving their customers and support their employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally,\nit is imperative that we help our species learn profound lessons from this public\nhealth crisis so that the underlying dysfunctions and disservices of modern\nsociety are diagnosed and remedied. Service systems should be resilient and\nflexible as they adapt to fulfilling human needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If social inclusion became the way human service systems were designed and delivered, we would be much less likely to need to practice \u201csocial distancing\u201d in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Raymond Fisk
Professor of Marketing
Honorary Professor of International Studies
McCoy College of Business Administration
Texas State University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentioned Research<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fisk,\nR.P., Alkire (n\u00e9e Nasr), L., Anderson, L., Bowen, D.E., Gruber, T., Ostrom,\nA.L. & Patr\u00edcio, L. (2020), “Elevating the human experience (hx)\nthrough service research collaborations: Introducing ServCollab”, Journal\nof Service Management<\/em>, Forthcoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fisk,\nR.P., Dean, A.M., Alkire (n\u00e9e Nasr), L., Joubert, A., Previte, J., Robertson,\nN. & Rosenbaum, M.S. (2018), “Design for service inclusion: Creating\ninclusive service systems by 2050”, Journal of Service Management<\/em>,\nVol. 29 No. 5, pp. 834-858.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Fisk The COVID-19 Pandemic is rippling across our Planet and compelling us to hunker down at home. The new public health mantra of \u201csocial distancing\u201d is the opposite of normal human interactions for our very social species. While we struggle with this isolation, at least we have the Internet to bring us together. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[714],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9422"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9429,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422\/revisions\/9429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}