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This paper aims to explore the antecedents and consequences of service chain flexibility (SCF) in healthcare service delivery.

A structural model was developed based on a literature review. A 29-indicator questionnaire was circulated among service providers in the healthcare system across India, and 253 valid responses were received, corresponding to a response rate of 46%. The research model was assessed using a cross-sectional research design, and the data were analyzed by structural equation modeling using analysis of moment structures (AMOS) software.

Service orientation (SO), technology integration (TI), knowledge sharing (KS) and supply chain integration (SCI) were identified as antecedents of SCF, the consequence of which is responsiveness in service delivery (RSD). Furthermore, patient-centered care moderates the relationship between SCF and RSD.

This paper highlights the impact of SCF on RSD in healthcare organizations. Consideration of the four constructs of SO, TI, KS and SCI as antecedents of SCF and, in turn, RSD may be one of the limitations. Future work may identify other theoretical constructs with potential impacts on SCF and RSD. Furthermore, eight months for data collection could have resulted in early-late response bias. This study was operationalized in India and may reflect political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors unique to India.

The study provides suggestions to practitioners for building RSD by leveraging SO, TI, KS and SCI in flexibility-driven service chain processes. Recognizing the relationships among these constructs can aid in the timely formulation of corrective actions and patient-centric policies.

This paper highlights how focusing on a SCF can promote RSD. This understanding may aid the design of processes that develop patient-centricity and deliver health as a social good in an effective manner.

The empirical evidence from this study can help hospitals integrate and build flexibility in their functions, thus enabling them to deliver responsiveness in care.

Healthcare providers are under pressure due to increasing and more complex demands for services. Increased pressure on budgets and human resources adds to an ever-growing problem set. Competent leaders are in demand to ensure effective and well-performing healthcare organisations that deliver balanced results and high-quality services. Researchers have made significant efforts to identify and define determining competencies for healthcare leadership. Broad terms such as competence are, however, inherently at risk of becoming too generic to add analytical value. The purpose of this study is to suggest a holistic framework for understanding healthcare leadership competence, that can be crucial for operationalising important healthcare leadership competencies for researchers, decision-makers as well as practitioners.

In the present study, a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) was conducted to analyse competency descriptions for healthcare leaders. The descriptions were retrieved from peer reviewed empirical studies published between 2010 and 2022 that aimed to identify healthcare services leadership competencies. Grounded theory was utilised to code the data and inductively develop new categories of healthcare leadership competencies. The categorisation was then analysed to suggest a holistic framework for healthcare leadership competence.

Forty-one papers were included in the review. Coding and analysing the competence descriptions resulted in 12 healthcare leadership competence categories: (1) character, (2) interpersonal relations, (3) leadership, (4) professionalism, (5) soft HRM, (6) management, (7) organisational knowledge, (8) technology, (9) knowledge of the healthcare environment, (10) change and innovation, (11) knowledge transformation and (12) boundary spanning. Based on this result, a holistic framework for understanding and analysing healthcare services leadership competencies was suggested. This framework suggests that the 12 categories of healthcare leadership competencies include a range of knowledge, skills and abilities that can be understood across the dimension personal – and technical, and organisational internal and – external competencies.

This literature review was conducted with the results of searching only two electronic databases. Because of this, there is a chance that there exist empirical studies that could have added to the development of the competence categories or could have contradicted some of the descriptions used in this analysis that were assessed as quite harmonised. A CIS also opens for a broader search, including the grey literature, books, policy documents and so on, but this study was limited to peer-reviewed empirical studies. This limitation could also have affected the result, as complex phenomenon such as competence might have been disclosed in greater details in, for example, books.

The holistic framework for healthcare leadership competences offers a common understanding of a “fuzzy” concept such as competence and can be used to identify specific competency needs in healthcare organisations, to develop strategic competency plans and educational programmes for healthcare leaders.

This study reveals a lack of consensus regarding the use and understanding of the concept of competence, and that key competencies addressed in the included papers are described vastly different in terms of what knowledge, skills and abilities they entail. This challenges the operationalisation of healthcare services leadership competencies. The proposed framework for healthcare services leadership competencies offers a common understanding of work-related competencies and a possibility to analyse key leadership competencies based on a holistic framework.

This empirical study aims to explore how actors in specific human resource practices (HRPs) such as line managers (LMs) impact employee productivity measures in the context of financial institutions (FI) banks.

This cross-country study adopted a qualitative methodology. It employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from purposefully selected 12 business facing directors (BFDs) working in the top 10 banks in Nigeria and the UK. The data collected were analysed with the help of the trans-positional cognition approach (TPCA) phenomenological method.

The findings of a TPCA analytical process imply that in the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, the BFDs line managers’ human resources practices (LMHRPs) resulted in a highly regulated workplace, knowledge gap, service operations challenges and subjective quantitatively driven key performance indicators, considered service productivity paradoxical elements. Although the practices in the UK and Nigerian FIs had similar labels, their aggregates were underpinned by different contextual issues.

To support LMs in better understanding and managing FIs BFDs productivity measures and outcomes, we propose the Managerial Employee Productivity Operational Definition framework as part of their toolkit. This study will be helpful for banking sectors, their regulators, policymakers, other FIs’ industry stakeholders and future researchers in the field.

Within the context of the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, this study is the first attempt to understand how LMHRPs impact BFDs productivity in this manner. It confirms that LMHRPs result in service productivity paradoxical elements with perceived or lost productivity implications.

The purpose of this study is to examine the rostering practices and work experiences of medical scientists at four health services in the Australian public healthcare sector. There are over 16,000 medical scientists (AIHW, 2019) in Australia responsible for carrying out pathology testing to help save the lives of thousands of patients every day. However, there are systemic shortages of medical scientists largely due to erratic rostering practices and workload issues. The purpose of this paper is to integrate evidence-based human resource management (EBHRM), the LAMP model and HR analytics to enhance line manager decision-making on rostering to support the wellbeing of medical scientists.

Using a qualitative methodological approach, the authors conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with managers/directors and nine focus groups with 53 medical scientists, making a total 74 participants from four large public hospitals in Australia.

Across four health services, manual systems of rostering and management decisions do not meet the requirements of the enterprise agreement (EA) and impact negatively on the wellbeing of medical scientists in pathology services. The authors found no evidence of the systematic approach of the organisations and line managers to implement the LAMP model to understand the root causes of rostering challenges and negative impact on employees. Moreover, there was no evidence of sophisticated use of HR analytics or EBHRM to support line managers' decision-making regarding mitigation of rostering related challenges such as absenteeism and employee turnover.

The authors contribute to HRM theory by integrating EBHRM, the LAMP model (Boudreau and Ramstad, 2007) and HR analytics to inform line management decision-making. The authors advance understandings of how EBHRM incorporating the LAMP model and HR analytics can provide a systematic and robust process for line managers to make informed decisions underpinned by data.

New service businesses carry opportunities for industrial companies. The different cost management and management control implications of those service businesses deserve attention, which is a widely under-researched area in management accounting and control literature. Digital twins could hold potential in unveiling and supporting those new service business opportunities, as a unique approach of this paper. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility and potential for creating a digital twin of a service, especially to unveil the management accounting and control implications of the digital twin in developing new service businesses.

This paper investigates the potential of a digital twin in unveiling cost and control implications of new service businesses by examining the characteristics of a digital twin in the service business development context. The paper use an in-depth interventionist case study, where the designed animations illustrate the possibilities of a digital twin of a service. The animations showing the service process characteristics were first used as a communication tool and eventually those animations were actively used in customer cases for different purposes. This motivated the idea for examining the implications of such animations representing a digital twin of a service.

The paper provides empirical insights regarding the potential for developing and using a digital twin of a service for different cost management and management control purposes. The digital twin of a service may include all main details of a new service offering, simulating the functionality of a service, hence making the performance and the implications of the new service concept clear for all the stakeholders. The digital twin of the service enables defining the processes, setting targets and helps communication about the value generation. Thus, they represent a significant toolkit for the management accounting and control function of the manufacturers.

This paper is among the first attempts to understand the digital twin of the service. The paper is unique in providing financial and control implications of digital twins also in the context of service business development. The in-depth interventionist approach enabled an exceptional exploration process on the subject. The article paves the way toward further research on managing the digital twins of services in the future.

This study aims to examine the impact of AI service robots on restaurant customers' engagement and acceptance and the moderating role of robot anthropomorphism on the relationship between AI robot service quality and customer engagement.

Using a three-wave time-lagged design, 416 customers of service robots-enabled restaurants participated in the study. Mplus was used to examine the hypotheses.

The results confirmed that customers' perception regarding automation, personalization, efficiency and precision of robot service quality determine customer engagement, which further influences customer acceptance of AI service robots. Additionally, robot anthropomorphism moderates the relationships between AI robot service quality in terms of automation, personalization, efficiency and precision and customer engagement. This study confirms that AI service robots-customer engagement contributes to better acceptance of AI service robots.

The proposed framework can be used as a diagnostic tool to enhance customer acceptance of AI service robots in restaurant settings. This research provides guidelines to restaurant owners to employ AI service robots in front-line services that provide better quality, ultimately enhancing customer engagement and acceptance.

This study fills the gap in the literature by investigating the influence of AI robot service quality on customer engagement and customer acceptance with the moderating effect of robot anthropomorphism in an emerging market context.

This study aims to explore how green supply chain management (GSCM) strategies can be effectively implemented for business supply chain operations, relationship management and product design to gain green competitive advantages.

An exploratory in-depth case study was conducted with one of the largest Chinese electronics manufacturers that is considered a leading GSCM adopter in the industry, to understand how the company adopts green supply chain practices across its multiple product lines.

The findings show that businesses can build different green focuses across GSCM elements of green operation, green relationship management and green product design to form diverse hybrid strategic solutions. They include green control, lean, leagile, agile and clean innovation while taking consideration of supply chain type and product lifespan. A taxonomy of four key GSCM strategic combinations is proposed based on the findings. The strategies align with green demand and supply chain characteristics balancing a series of business competitive objectives in terms of reducing pollution and waste, improving green cost efficiency, enhancing green demand innovation and building green service effectiveness.

This study lends insight into the strategic alignment relationships between product supply chain types and approaches to GSCM.

The findings of this study can support industry practitioners in formulating aligned GSCM strategies based on product types to achieve optimal results.

Optimised green supply chain design, operations and relationship management incorporating product attributes can help further minimise negative impacts of business activities on the environment.

This research provides a systematic understanding of how product supply chain types can influence GSCM strategy formulation. It gives a holistic picture of how hybrid choices of strategies with green supply chain operations, relationship management and product design can be formulated based on product and supply chain characteristics.

This research proposes a framework to conceptualise the potential realm of data regarding shipping connectivity for application of data analytics which can be used to generate deeper insights with respect to the state of such linkages and potential areas for practical application.

The study method involved comprehensive presentation of different perspectives of assessing shipping connectivity and levels of data contained within container shipping services and proposed potential application to analyse profitability, performance, competitiveness, risk and environmental impact.

Advances in capabilities to handle large volumes of data offer scope for an integrated approach which utilises all available data from various stakeholders in analyses of liner shipping connectivity. Research shows how different types of data contained in container shipping services are related and can be organised for application of data analytics.

Research implications are offered to shipping lines, port managers and operators and policymakers.

This research presented a conceptual framework that captures the range of data involved in container shipping services and how data analytics can be practically applied in an integrated manner.

This paper is the first in literature to discuss in detail the different levels of data that reside within shipping services that constitute liner shipping connectivity for application of data analytics.

This article overviews some key contributions to service research from the organizational behavior/human resource management (OB/HRM) discipline with its strong focus on the role of employees. This focus complements the Marketing discipline’s heavy emphasis on customers, largely true of service research, overall.

Ten OB/HRM frameworks/perspectives are applied to analyzing the roles of people (with a focus on employees and modest consideration of customers as “partial” employees who co-create value) in a service organization context. Also, commentary is offered on how the frameworks relate to six key themes in contemporary service research and/or practice. The article concludes with five reflections on the role and status of employees in service research—past, present and future.

Employee roles in evolving service contexts; participation role readiness of both employees and customers; role stress in participating customers; an employee “empowered state of mind”; an emphasis on internal service quality; “strong” HRM systems link individual HRM practices to firm performance; service-profit chain with links to well-being of employees and customers; a sociotechnical system theory lens on organizational frontlines (OF); service climate as an exemplar of interdisciplinary research; emotional labor in both employees and customers; the Human Experience (HX); specification of employee experience (EX).

Service remains very much about people who still guide organizational design, develop service strategy, place new service technologies and even still serve customers. Also, a people and organization-based competitive advantage is tough to copy, thus possessing sustainability, unlike with imitable technology.

Using data from a continuous and ongoing cross-sectional web survey on hospitalisation service experiences in two Italian regions, the authors used multilevel and multivariate logistic regression models to identify factors related to users' demographics, emotional and informative support, technical and physical aspects of the provision, influencing satisfaction and willingness-to-recommend, before and during a crisis.

The value-in-use, defined in terms of a positive or negative value given by the experience with services, can be evaluated by users and influenced by the context of provision. The authors tested whether and how the value-in-use of services changed in a context of crisis. This study is applied to the healthcare sector during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, by evaluating the impact of the pandemic on hospitalisation experience.

Overall, analyses of 8,712 questionnaires found a greater value after the pandemic spread. In a time of crisis, technical and informative aspects of care were found to be most valued by patients that may recognise the extraordinary professionalism of workers during the crisis.

This study empirically suggests that context can affect the evaluation of value-in-use by patients during unprecedented circumstances, producing additional value-in-context.

These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

The level of healthcare system distress, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, positively affects patients' propensity to recommend, which the authors suggest is driven by healthcare services' feelings of reverse compassion. These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience, which can have positive social implications. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

Research based on the intersection of theoretical and empirical research regarding value-in-use, value-in-context and service quality measured through user experience is scarce, in particular in the healthcare sector. The authors' findings set the direction for future research on the influence of context on value creation and value creation's perception by users, on the concept of reverse compassion and on reverse compassion's impact on organisational well-being, particularly in times of crisis.