This article deals with the production and regional development of child care services in Sweden. The production of social services outside the home is discussed in relation to labour market needs and equal opportunities. Staffing, organisation and extension of child care services, as well as restructuring trends are dealt with. The services studied are characterised by local solutions. Reasons for local variations are discussed with special references to labour market factors, political tradition and level of urbanisation. No single factor can explain the variations. Explanations have to be found in the specific local mix of factors.
A traditional understanding of voluntary organizations with a social mission is that they are offering social services. In this article, this understanding is argued to be misleading. In a study of 59 social voluntary organizations (SVOs) an alternative view is proposed. Instead of offering social services, these organizations co-create sociality, and this is realized in collaboration with clients and in the contexts of social networks. This shift in understanding regarding what these organizations provide is mirrored in their marketing approach and managerial practice. The study is based on theory of organizational identity and service-dominant logic (S-D logic) and the findings advances our understanding of marketing approaches of SVOs, identifying the dialectical relation between organizational identity and managerial action, an organizational action embedded in integrative and excluding forces in the local society. The study also adds to research of transformative service research unfolding how service organizations create transformative services.
Not much attention has been devoted to the relationship between service culture and service strategy, including services marketing strategy. The assumption that service culture drives service strategy has not been empirically examined. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the strategic role that service culture and service strategy have for business development in a long-term perspective. The empirical basis for our discussion comes from IKEA, the largest retail furniture firm in the world. Our results clearly show the importance of a strong and dynamic service culture for market and business success
This article aims for a deeper understanding of front-line employees (FLEs) and their boundary-spanning role in service organizations’ innovation processes from the vantage points of creativity and service innovation theory. It explores in particular FLEs’ processes of creativity by focusing on how ideas emerge and how these ideas are further managed in the organizations’ innovation processes. It draws on an in-depth empirical study of three units at a large spa and resort hotel. The article demonstrates how FLEs’ ideas are related to the assimilation and utilization of knowledge gained in the customer–supplier interface. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of ‘management by weaving’, which encompasses the middle managers’ roles in the complexity of leading diverse innovation processes in the service organization. By having the roles of facilitator, gatekeeper, and translator, middle managers hold the key position for letting FLEs play the role as innovators.
his research aims to revive the applicability of the exchange concept in the marketing domain. The authors draw on current exchange theories to show how members of an aquatic center receive relational, social support, and restorative resources from other center members and employees. They then empirically demonstrate that members’ loyalty to the center is fueled by the resources they receive from others in the center and that their experience in the center mediates the relationship between exchanged resources and member loyalty. This research reveals that service organizations may foster person-place bonds by providing customers with resources over and above goods and services. Customers appreciate resources that transform their well-being, such as social support and natural, restorative resources, and they demonstrate loyalty to places where they can obtain therapeutic resources. From a theoretical standpoint, this work shows support for the notion that the exchange concept is a foundational aspect of a general theory of marketing and explains how the exchange and value concepts in marketing are linked together.
Service innovation processes are driven by stakeholders in interaction and are understood and sketched as a value negotiation process that consists of an iterative process of securing potential value in service. While previous research has focused on service innovation as a harmonious closed system, our study explores service innovation as a political process in which stakeholders negotiate to create and secure future value. Data are collected through interviews and participant observations in four different case studies. Our study contributes to the field by illuminating service innovation as a political process and explaining how this is operationalized. The findings also contribute to an understanding of how stakeholder resources impact a chosen strategy; the resulting strategy's impact on the service concept vis-a-vis its potential value; and how several involved stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and secure future potential value, which are the activities that drive a service innovation process.
Customers and employees can co-create a resolution following a service failure through integrating their resources. Their activities and interactions during resource-integration shape the customers' service recovery experiences. Prior research overlooks resource integration between all involved actors in a co-created service recovery process. This research details the process with two empirical studies. Study 1 is a qualitative analysis of narratives of service recovery experiences; Study 2 is a quantitative assessment of scenario-based survey data. The results show that a favourable service recovery experience is resulted from integrating all involved actors' resources in a mutually beneficial manner. Three key resources are financial compensation, service skills including communication and timing. Our findings indicate that co-created service recovery fails in the absence of just one resource or mismatches in their integration. The combined studies reveal that customers use their justice perceptions to assess activities and interactions for resource integration in service recovery.