Microsoft Word Volume 2 Service and Service Quality Final docx

Services as Resources/Capabilities 
The ‘service as benefit’ perspective, discussed above, however, also implies that rather than 
exchanging products for products, actors exchange capabilities for capabilities (Vargo & Lusch, 
2004). They stress the role of operant resources, i.e. resources employed to act on operand resources 
(and other operant resources) to produce effects, as opposed to operand resources, i.e. resources on 
which an operation or act is performed to produce an effect. They consider knowledge and skills as the 
ultimate operant resource. Related to this, Grönroos (2006, p.324) states that service is ‘a process 
where a set of resources interact with each other and with the customer aiming at supporting the 

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Business Service Management White Paper - Volume 2 
Page 10 of 46 
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cited characteristics are outdated as generic service characteristics.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.