Thurgood, Mark John (2024) A service ecosystem perspective on the broader contribution of front-line employees to the service innovation process. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
Traditionally front-line employees who represent their organisation to customers, have only been utilised in ideas generation, service design and implementation in the service innovation process. Building on theory from a service-dominant logic service ecosystem perspective, at a meso-level and micro-level, this thesis explores how front-line employees can broaden their contribution to the service innovation process through improved organisational understanding and recognition. This is centred on subjective concepts of organisational arrangements, staff allocation, and staff skills and knowledge. These when combined give a service ecosystem view. This thesis argues that it is only through taking this perspective that organisations can extensively maximise and benefit from front-line employees customer relationship knowhow, to improve customer value and customer co-creation, and thus services delivery to advance competitive advantage. Data collection was via semi-structured interviews with 42 managers, consultants and front-line employees. All participants having current and many years’ experience undertaking services delivery and service innovation and so their insights, knowledge and expertise could be elicited. Targeted organisations for the research were based in the UK finance, health and university sectors, as these types of organisations characteristically display a strong services delivery and service innovation ethos. Empirical data analysis discovered organisational arrangement themes categorising: culture appreciation; strategy engagement; systems context. Staff allocation themes categorising: management vision, promote learning, assessing staff allocation. Staff skills and knowledge categorising: knowledge sharing, customer domain expert and lessons learn. The contribution includes empirical data findings and a new theory based on service-dominant logic focused on front-line employees. A series of conceptual models on the broader contribution of front-line employees in the service innovation process are proposed to assist organisational practitioners in the improvement of service innovation outcomes.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Oct 2024 15:34 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Oct 2024 15:44 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/54359 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00054359 |
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