Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to create awareness on the need for lifting up the level of analysis in service research by focusing on systems, networks, and ecosystems to contribute to the research expansion of the traditionally narrow view of service. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper is built upon three blocks. First, the viable systems approach is revised to highlight the survival, viability, and complexity of service systems. Second, the dynamics of service networks is discussed using an ecological view of service with a nested, networked configuration. Third, these two previous perspectives are integrated using the fundamentals of ecosystems thinking. Findings – This paper outlines a novel, tri-level approach reorienting and reframing our thinking around systems, networks, and ecosystems. Some research challenges and directions that could expand the body of knowledge in service research are also discussed. Research limitations/implications – The tri-level approach proposed in this conceptual paper could be enriched with other theoretical perspectives and empirical explorations. Practical implications – Lifting the level of analysis by focussing on service systems, service networks, and service ecosystems would allow practitioners to expand their business perspective to better face the challenges of complex business settings, enabling them to co-create value for all their stakeholders. Originality/value – The paper contributes to set the foundation for the next stage of service research by going beyond dyadic interactions to address dynamic systems, networks, and ecosystems across different interaction patterns in complex business configurations.

Purpose Poverty, hunger, inequalities, diseases, unsustainable use of resources, etc., in spite of scientific progress, still remains unsolved worldwide issues. All these issues relate to the challenges of sustainability and sustainable development that now call for urgent answers. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the service research community can respond to this call and to identify key areas of potential contribution. Design/methodology/approach After a brief review of selected service literature aimed at exploring its interest in the topics of sustainability and sustainable development, the authors develop the interpretative proposal identifying the key requirements of a global engagement in the challenge of sustainability and sustainable development and highlighting the potential contribution of service research. Findings Findings highlight the potential contribution of service research to the global challenge of sustainability and suggest acting upon education by considering the “T-Shaped” professional model as a possible reference for embedding sustainability in the education of future managers and addressing the need of interdisciplinary thinking through the systems approach. Research limitations/implications The proposed study of service literature is only an exploratory analysis of main contributions that does not aim to identify gaps but only to highlight the potential of a greater engagement of service research in the global call for a more sustainable and inclusive development. Practical implications A trans-disciplinary approach is also required. This implies the involvement of the business and the social real world. Originality/value This paper represents a novel call for engaging the service research community in a boundary-crossing collaboration with the aim of contributing to address the challenge of sustainability.

The Service Systems research group at WMG works in collaboration with large organisations such as GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, IBM, Ministry of Defence as well as with SMEs researching into value constellations, new business models and value-creating service systems of people, product, service and technology.The group aims to advance the knowledge of value-creating service systems to help organisations innovate and evolve to new business models and make better decisions in the design, delivery and management of their value propositions to cocreate value.In particular, we pursue the knowledge of service systems for value co-creation that is replicable, scalable and transferable so that we can address some of the most difficult challenges faced by businesses, markets and society. Research StreamsThe WMG Service Systems research group conducts research that is capable of solving real problems in practice, and also to create theoretical abstractions from or research that is relevant and applicable across sector and industry, so that the impact of our research is substantial.The group currently conducts research under six broad themes:

This paper aims to propose the contribution of adopting a systemic perspective to researching sustainability in terms of inclusivity and holistic view, going beyond the limitations of a reductionist approach. Among the different systemic approaches, the methodological lens proposed herein is the one of the Viable Systems Approach, according to which sustainability, which can be seen as a process that is dynamic and changing over time, is linked to the notion of systemic viability and connected to some of the most relevant key concepts of Viable Systems Approach.\ud Through the proposition of the conceptual model of ‘The Viable Systems Cycle’, the authors intend to propose a different approach to the analysis and interpretation of sustainability that concerns the relationship among efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability itself and the way they orient and influence sustainable business behaviors

With the aim of addressing a gap in service research on co-creation in health care, this study discusses\ud the problem of information asymmetry in the service provider–user relationship by adopting the Viable\ud Systems Approach. We develop a three-step interpretative framework to support the understanding of\ud the health service relationship by going beyond the traditional information asymmetry view towards a\ud framework capable of examining the human side of service interaction. Using the case of the Italian Health\ud System, we discuss whether and how the problem of information asymmetry affects the health care\ud provider–user co-creation relationship. Our findings open up a wider view of information asymmetry,\ud suggesting a shift in focus from information sharing to interpretation schemes sharing, all the way up\ud to values sharing, offering new insights for co-creation in health care

he main purpose of this paper is to highlight the new opportunities that the Viable Systems Approach (VSA) can provide for observing complex service systems and explaining social phenomena through general schemes of interpretation. At the same time, it explores methodological links with the Service Science (SS) approach in order to propose (VSA)'s contribution to moulding a unified vision of complex objects of analysis, and to evidence the many converging elements that emerge from the two perspectives as well as the benefits that derive from different interpretation schemes.In particular, in our paper we analyze healthcare service complexity in a relational perspective, using a VSA-SS conceptual framework to interpret the emergent systems instability in the Italian Health Service. The application of principles and concepts proper to the (VSA) and the SS approaches to articulated service structures, such as healthcare, identifies critical features and interesting new "therapeutic" prospects for healthcare service systems in order to guarantee their viability.The paper proposes an innovative methodological basis for evaluating the level of appropriateness of the healthcare service and, at the same time, evidences the need for achieving a balanced triple target of efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability (EES) in healthcare service systems governance. As a result, a new area of cross fertilization for collaborative research emerges.

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In a fast-changing environment, organizations face conditions of growing complexity that challenge decision-making and innovation activities, highlighting an increasing need to develop dynamic capabilities. In this scenario, our focus is on service science's recent call for “T-shaped professionals,” identified as people possessing both functional/disciplinary expertise and ability to apply knowledge across different contexts. Starting from this notion and by adopting a viable systems approach (vSa), we shift focus from individuals to organizations, providing an interpretation of the structure and dynamics of a “T-shaped knowledge” to be developed with respect to a distributed knowledge management network in which organizations pursue learning-by-interaction and knowledge cocreation. By integrating the vSa and the distributed knowledge management framework (DKMF), our proposal provides a multidimensional vSa-DKMF metamodel to assess the relational conditions among cooperating organizations as well as to provide guidelines for the construction of a knowledge network built on the idea of T-shaped knowledge. To illustrate the practical aspects of vSa-DKMF, we focus on the case of open communities of practice as an emblematic example of developing a T-shaped knowledge starting from a specialized (“I-shaped”) knowledge.