Business Service Management White Paper - Volume 2
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customer’s processes in a value-creating way.’ He stresses that services are value-supporting
processes, unlike goods that are value-supporting resources. This has relevance to views on selecting
and deploying resources
in strategic management, as discussed in the resource-based view and the
dynamic capabilities approach (e.g. Makadok, 2001). Services as the process of using one’s resources
for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself, is the basis of the ‘Service-Dominant Logic’ of
Vargo and Lusch (2004), who argue that organizations, markets, and society are fundamentally
concerned with exchange of service. This implies that all firms are service firms;
all markets are
centred on the exchange of services, and all economies and societies are service based.
Service as Perspective
While Service Marketing literature has become increasingly prominent and voluminous, as evident
from the
preceding discussion, the research community has yet to achieve consensus on what ‘service’
means. It may transpire that the search for a generally accepted definition is to no avail. An extensive
literature review by Edvardsson et al. (2005) suggests that service definitions are too narrow, and that
cited characteristics are outdated as generic service characteristics. They conclude that at a general
level, a service is better conceived as a ‘perspective’ on
value creation, rather than a category of
market offerings. They further suggest, that at lower levels of abstraction (or detail or specificity), a
generic service definition is not possible, as these more specific conceptions are by definition more
specific
to a particular provider, a particular time, the particular service itself, and a particular
perspective. Edvardsson et al. (2005) consider why definitions refer to either ‘services’ (plural) or
‘service’ (singular), and suggest that these have different meanings depending on whether ‘we view
the definitions as an objective way of portraying services or as a way of constructing them in terms of
value-creation.’
On the one hand, ‘services’ are seen as activities that are the object of exchange
relating to something that can be offered to the customer. On the other hand, ‘service’ can be
perceived as a perspective on value creation relating to the performance of the whole organization
providing the customer with a good experience and outcome.
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