Directions for future research on advancing service supply chains
| Theme | Highlights, exemplary research problems and questions |
|---|---|
| Roles | For single actors, roles can be flexible, and velocity in switching roles may be necessary. In other cases, actors may assume new roles without leaving their current ones. By contrast, for complex services, roles may be embodied by the relationship between actors. Thus, the overarching question is what roles are needed and fit the service offered. To further explore roles in service supply chains, we propose research focussing on: The flexibility of actors within specific roles (e.g. capabilities needed to assume responsibility for new parts of the value chain); Switching between roles, including the ability and velocity of actors to switch from being customers to being providers; Dual roles (i.e. occupying two roles at once), as when customers switch to being suppliers of, for instance, information about products in use purchased by their suppliers and thereby reverse the business model; and Joint and relational roles, which offer benefits if inseparable from a single actor (e.g. creates resilience to disruptive events and changes) |
| Governance | When providers servitise new challenges arise in relation to governance, including: Having the customer’s sourcing strategies keep pace with the provider’s service advancements; Developing sourcing strategies for advanced services and complex solutions (e.g. integrating innovation and new technologies from new and current partners); Complexity of governance structures suitable for simple services offered within the realm of collaborative consumption and sharing economy; and Implementing advanced, knowledge-intensive professional services that rely upon layered governance beyond mere service-level agreements or contracts |
| Joint spheres | Creating and populating joint spheres that support value co-creation require an understanding of: Determining “what is the right supply chain for your service strategy?”; The use of customer feedback as a basis for improvements and innovations; How the non-tiered, concurrent feature of joint spheres fosters a truly joint approach to service innovation (i.e. shifting from either provider- or customer-driven innovation to engaging three or more actors in a joint instead of tiered structure); Joint spheres with limited interactions are not necessarily regarded as so-called “structural holes” but may serve the function of separating actors in cases where value is created independently (e.g. relation between political systems and legislative and judiciary systems); and New practices and processes are needed to support data-driven value creation that resides in the joint sphere’s proximity to customers |
| Strategic digitalisation | A critical, problematising view on digitalisation and digital connectivity in the supply chain requires: Investigating the operational role of supply chain professionals when making informed decisions about the digital connectivity of and in supply chains; Service capabilities needed to release the potential of, e.g. Big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and self-service technologies; Squaring digitalisation with servitisation require new combination of human-to-digital interfaces, e.g. between patients and doctors in the health care sector; Forging provider–customer commitment resulting from investments in digitalising existing processes; and Overcoming innovation inertia and/or ripple effects caused by disruptions in supply chains |
| Research design | As value from services is co-created in interaction, methodological approaches should be aligned and exploit interaction, e.g. by service action research; and Use of secondary data can enable studies of and critical learnings from service failures |
| Theme | Highlights, exemplary research problems and questions |
|---|---|
| Roles | For single actors, roles can be flexible, and velocity in switching roles may be necessary. In other cases, actors may assume new roles without leaving their current ones. By contrast, for complex services, roles may be embodied by the relationship between actors. Thus, the overarching question is what roles are needed and fit the service offered. To further explore roles in service supply chains, we propose research focussing on: |
| Governance | When providers servitise new challenges arise in relation to governance, including: |
| Joint spheres | Creating and populating joint spheres that support value co-creation require an understanding of: |
| Strategic digitalisation | A critical, problematising view on digitalisation and digital connectivity in the supply chain requires: |
| Research design | As value from services is co-created in interaction, methodological approaches should be aligned and exploit interaction, e.g. by service action research; and |
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