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02:11
Cognitive distortion accounted workload in service operations
von Scheele, Fabian; Haftor, Darek M.
Stockholm University School of Business, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract Compared to the production of goods, service
operations are typically more workforce intensive and use one
of two very different kinds of contracts: current account or
fixed price. This implies that the workload and the working
time of human agents that produce services are central for
the efficiency and quality of service operations and service
economy. The present elaboration proposes a novel workload
equation, of human agents executing service operations.
This workload equation incorporates the phenomena of
cognitive time distortion, which is the difference between the
physical time and the cognitive time for a given spatial event;
the primer is measured by means of a physical clock while
the latter is assessed by the human psyche. The proposed
workload equation states that with a fixed relation between
profit level and price, time distortion of the total contracted
time is inversely proportional to the distortion of profit.
This implies that variations in price and workload can be
interpreted as the result of cognitive time distortion. This
shows that the cognitive time distortion has a pronounced
lever effect influencing price, profit and workload. Small errors
in time assessment, made by the human agents engaged, may
correspond to dramatic variations in price, profit or workload.
The significance of the proposed workload equation is that, for
the first time, the phenomena of cognitive time distortion, well
known in the mental and medical sciences, is now incorporated
into an economic conception of human activity systems, such
as service operations. This, in turn, opens an opportunity
for the development of managerial techniques that may help
us to detect, predict and reduce the emergence of cognitive
time distortion, and thus its consequences, such as human
work overload, the human not well being, and the economic
inefficiencies.
02:12
How is service innovation organized in KIBS-firms? - Towards a
typology of service innovation practices
Hallin, Anette
KTH: The Royal Institute of Technology, INDEK: Dept of
Industrial Economics and Management, Stockholm, Sweden
During the past decade, a rapid increase in scholarly research
on new service development (NSD) can be identified. Despite
recent contributions, NSD remains among the least studied
topics in the services management and innovation literature. So
far most attention has been given to the success factors in NSD,
and the majority of empirical studies have addressed relatively
standardised consumer services such as financial services.
Furthermore, much of the traditional NSD research principally
tests the application and applicability of models for the product
development process in the services context, and fewer attempts
have been made to describe the versatile approaches that are
actually practiced in service firms. In sum, little is known about
how professional service companies in particular organize their
daily activities in order to develop services for business-clients.
The purpose of this paper is thus to explore how NSD/service
innovation is organized in KIBS-firms. This is achieved though
qualitative, multiple case studies investigating knowledgeintensive
business service firms in Sweden and in Finland.
By comparing service development practices across cases the
paper seeks to identify different approaches for organising
service innovation in KIBS firms. The outcome of the paper
is a typology of service innovation practices where service
innovation is understood as a result of organizational features
such as organizational size and type of formal structure, as well
as of service features such as degree of standardization and
tangibility of the service.
Whist the service literature suggests different marketing and
management implications for different types of services,
the nature of the service offering, or the features of the
service organisation are seldom addressed as contingencies
for service innovation practices. The study contributes to
the literature domains of service innovation and NSD by
increasing understanding on the context dependency of service
development practices.
02:13
A research model for sales force strategy the during product
launch
Haftor, Darek; Fraenkel, Stefan
Stockholm University, School of Business, Stockholm, Sweden
The current call for, and focus on, innovation of new products,
services and capabilities have a twin side: once a new product
has been developed it needs to be introduced onto its targeted
market. In many industries, a key tool for such a product
launch is the company’s sales force. The latter’s configuration
and management may determine success or failure of a
product launch and in some specific cases the future existence
of the whole company. Further, in several industries, e.g. the
pharmaceutical, the sales force frequently generates the single
largest operating cost. Given this dual strategic position of
a sales force, a determinant for successful revenue streams
and a key operating cost when launching a new product, it
is unfortunate that there is very little research produced with
regard to what constitutes the key success factors for a sales
force strategy during the launch of a product – this is the
concern of the present inquiry. By means of an exhaustive
literature research the available empirical research results have
been identified, including sales force strategies and new product
launch strategies. Further, by means of conceptual elaboration,
a novel model has been formulated based in the identified
previous research results. The proposed model is constitutes of
three kinds of categories: (a) the constructs that characterize
the market conditions for a product launch, (b) constructs that
account for the sales force configuration, and (c) the constructs
for a product launch performance. The aim of the proposed
model is to guide the design of empirical research into what
constitutes key success factors of a sales force strategy during
a product launch. The next step would therefore be to design
such empirical research which will most likely requires some
adaptations of the proposed research model to the industries
and markets addressed. The novelty of the proposed research
model steams from the synthesis of sales force management
models and product launch models.
02:14
Service selling in industrial organizations: An exploratory study
of challenges and opportunities
Kindström, Daniel 1 ; Carlborg, Per 1 ; Nordin, Fredrik 2 ;
Kowalkowski, Christian 1
1 Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk och
industriell utveckling, Linköping, Sweden; 2 Stockholms
universitet, Stockholm, Sweden
An extension of the offering of industrial firms with services
implies that several elements of their product based business
models need to change to appropriate the promised benefits
of such extension. One such important element is the sales
function. Although much research focuses on the transition
towards services, there is a void of in-depth studied of the
effects and requirements on the sales function. This paper
addresses this gap by exploring challenges and opportunities
for the sales function in industrial firms when their offerings
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