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The purpose of this paper is to examine the marketization of domiciliary care, its consequences for employment practice, specifically fragmented time, and the implications for care quality.

Focus groups and face-to-face or telephone interviews were conducted with care commissioners, service providers and care workers across Wales. There were 113 participants in total.

These demonstrate fragmented time’s negative consequences for service providers, care workers and, ultimately, care quality.

No care recipients were interviewed and care quality was explored through the perceptions of other stakeholders.

For policy makers, tensions are evidenced between aspirations for high-quality care and commissioning practice that mitigates against it. Current care commissioning practices need urgent review.

The research extends the definition of fragmented time and integrates with a model of care quality to demonstrate its negative consequences. Links between employment practice and care quality have only previously been hinted at.

Modularity promises to relieve problems of complexity in service systems. However, limited evidence exists of its application in specialized hospital services. The purpose of this paper is to identify enablers, constraints, and outcomes of modularization in specialized hospital services.

A qualitative comparative study of a hematology unit with modular service architecture and an oncology unit with integral service architecture in a university hospital is performed to analyze the service architectures, enablers and constraints of modularization, and outcomes.

A framework and five propositions combining the characteristics of specialized hospital services, enabling activities, and outcomes of modularization were developed. Modular service architecture was developed through limiting the number of treatment components, reorganizing production of standardized components into a separate service unit, and standardizing communication and scheduling in interfaces. Modularization increased service efficiency but diluted ownership of services, decreased customization, and diminished informal communication. This is explained by the specific characteristics of the services: fragmented service delivery, professional autonomy, hierarchy, information asymmetry, and requirement to treat all.

Modularization can increase efficiency in specialized hospital services. However, specific characteristics of specialized care may challenge its application and limit its outcomes.

The study identifies enabling activities and constraints that hospital managers should take into account when developing modular service systems.

This is the first empirical study exploring the enablers, constraints, and outcomes of modularization in specialized hospital services. The study complements literature on service modularity with reference to specialized hospital services.

Following a contingency approach, this paper aims to understand when service automation can enhance or destroy value for customers in the frontline by (1) providing a comprehensive overview of factors that influence the value co-creation/co-destruction potential of service automation and (2) zooming in on the combination of service contexts and service tasks to develop research propositions.

This paper uses a grounded theory approach based on qualitative data from multiple methods (i.e. a diary study with follow-up interviews, a consultation of academic experts and a storyboard study) as well as a systematic literature review to develop (1) a Framework of Automated Service Interactions (FASI) and (2) a contingency model for service tasks/contexts.

This paper presents a framework which gives an overview of factors influencing the value co-creation/co-destruction potential of service automation. The framework discerns between three types of factors: service design (i.e. controllable and manageable by the organization), static contingency (i.e. uncontrollable and fixed) and dynamic contingency (i.e. uncontrollable and flexible). Furthermore, the paper presents a contingency model based on the combination of service contexts and service tasks which results in seven research propositions.

This paper brings structure in the fragmented field of service automation. It integrates and summarizes insights regarding service automation and sheds more light on when service automation has the potential to create or destroy value in the organizational frontline.

As structural changes, new market entrants, new technologies and increasing customer demands gather momentum, retail banks are under pressure to reduce their cost structures so that they can remain competitive. The banks are in danger of over reacting to these new pressures by neglecting the strategic value of their own institutional stature. Even though there is growing evidence that retail customers are not very happy with the services that banks deliver, customers still trust their banks as a safe and secure place to keep their money. They do so because of the bank’s institutional stature rather than their sophistication in customer service. The implications of this paper for both academics and practitioners are that many banks may be overlooking the importance of institutional stature as an important service differentiator and industry entry barrier.

The human service triad (i.e. the relationship between the customer, frontline employee (FLE) and managerial employee) experiences a range of well-being challenges when faced with the introduction of service robots. Despite growth in service robot scholarship, understanding of the well-being challenges affecting the human service triad remains fragmented. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to synthesise the literature and offer a research agenda aligned with the proposed Robotic-Human Service Trilemma. By taking a job performance approach (which considers the actions, behaviours and outcomes linked to organisational goals), the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma conceptualises three well-being challenges (intrusion, sideline and interchange). These challenges are realised via the realistic capabilities and constraints of service robot implementation.

This research relies on a systematic review of all disciplines concerning service robots. In total, 82 articles were analysed using thematic coding and led to the development of the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma and research agenda.

The analyses reveal the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma consists of three challenges: intrusion, sideline and indifference. The findings demonstrate that FLEs are required to counterbalance the constraints of service robots, leading to an uneven well-being burden within the human service triad. This paper suggests a research agenda for investigation of the challenges that underpin the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma.

Through the conceptualisation of the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma, this study is the first to explore how states of well-being equilibrium exist within the human service triad and how these states are challenged by service robots. The authors present a balanced centricity perspective to well-being that contrasts previous trade-off approaches and that enhances the body of service robot literature with a well-being lens.

This paper aims to investigate the role of value measuring (VM) as an integrated part of a deal introduced to govern the cross-boundary relationship of state specialist- and primary care providers in the Norwegian health sector.

Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic case study, this study explores the role of payment for dischargeable patients (PDP), an incentive arrangement introduced as a mechanism of value appropriation intended to create stability in the relationship and support improved patient flows between care providers. The fieldwork took place over approximately 18 months, consisting of intensive participant observations, interviews and document studies.

The VM integrated in the PDP deal between the hospital and municipality, on the surface level, appears simple. The VM, however, rests on a very complex practice of information sharing where accounts on patient status, procedures and activities form the basis of the integrated VM. The deal and its VM, despite its ambitious aims, were not able to fulfill the expectations of a smooth appropriation of value through the management of monetary flows or supporting information sharing for value creation. The VM of the PDP deal aimed at bringing the parties closer together, rather created a distance where money matters became a source of tension.

This study investigates the interconnections of deals and VM in a public sector service context, showing aspects of deals different from that of prior studies into private sector deals.

Medical technology (MedTech) is a growth industry, which like other manufacturing sectors has undergone fragmentation of production and emergence of Global Value Chains (GVCs). The purpose of this paper is to compare how two open European economies position themselves competitively within MedTech GVCs: highly developed Switzerland and the emerging Czech Republic.

The research applies a mixed methodology to analyze the performance of each location in the MedTech GVCs. It draws on macroeconomic, industry, trade and a proprietary sample of firm data, combined with onsite interviews.

The economic outcomes and GVC positions differ in both cases, whereas Switzerland focuses on high value-added activities such as R&D and after-sales service. Specialized manufacturing is also located here in spite of high costs. By contrast, the Czech Republic focuses mostly on low value-added activities, like manufacturing disposables, although some domestic innovative companies are notable. The authors generalize four types of firms in the industry, comparing their presence in both locations.

The competitive positions and challenges faced by each location when engaging in MedTech GVCs are summarized and related to economic outcomes. In the Czech Republic, the barriers to upgrading include its business environment, and weak links between education institutions and industry. Switzerland’s high cost structure is offset by adding high value in core competencies. Both countries should protect the inherent advantage their locations offer within responsive European supply chains.

GVC research in the MedTech sector has been limited. There is no comparison of two European countries, and their position in MedTech GVCs, nor of how firms, participate successfully in them.

The purpose of this paper is to use translation theory to develop a framework (called FTRA) that explains how companies adopt agile methods in a discourse of fragmentation and articulation.

A qualitative multiple case study of six firms using the Scrum agile methodology. Data were collected using mixed methods and analyzed using three progressive coding cycles and analytic induction.

In practice, people translate agile methods for local settings by choosing fragments of the method and continuously re-articulating them according to the exact needs of the time and place. The authors coded the fragments as technological rules that share relationships within a framework spanning two dimensions: static-dynamic and actor-artifact.

For consistency, the six cases intentionally represent one instance of agile methodology (Scrum). This limits the confidence that the framework is suitable for other kinds of methodologies.

The FTRA framework and the technological rules are promising for use in practice as a prescriptive or even normative frame for governing methodology adaptation.

Framing agile adaption with translation theory surfaces how the discourse between translocal (global) and local practice yields the social construction of agile methods. This result contrasts the more functionalist engineering perspective and privileges changeability over performance.

The use of translation theory and the FTRA framework to explain how agile adaptation (in particular Scrum) emerges continuously in a process where method fragments are articulated and re-articulated to momentarily suit the local setting. Complete agility that rapidly and elegantly changes its own environment must, as a concomitant, rapidly and elegantly change itself. This understanding also elaborates translation theory by explaining how the articulation and re-articulation of ideas embody the means by which ideas travel in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between strategic interventions with firm’s performance using flexible strategy game-card (FSGC) approach in the context of one of the Indian telecom service providers.

The paper adopts the case research methodology and follows the seven-step mechanism of implementing FSGC for designing performance management system (PMS) for case company.

The paper adopts an evolving performance management framework for development of PMS in the context of Indian enterprise, where there is limited work done in this field. It showcases identification of strategic factors from enterprise perspective, and subscribers’ perspective; defining measures, targets, strategic directions; alignment of strategic actions with strategic directions; executing strategic actions; and review and feedback, thus, the process of PMS development covers the entire cycle of strategy formulation and implementation.

The findings of case analysis is limited to the context of the study, which cannot be generalized, but the mechanism of PMS development can be taken as an exemplary for development of FSGC in the context of any enterprise.

The paper makes a contribution to the body of knowledge of performance measurement and management in terms showing its linkages with strategic interventions, and thus it leads to develop an effective PMS. The case illustration in context of the Indian enterprise makes a sectoral contribution.