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The growing service sector has experienced several revolutions that have transformed the way services are created and delivered. In parallel, services increasingly pique the interest of scholars, resulting in an expanding body of knowledge. Accordingly, it is time to reflect on extant service research, assess its boundaries, and think about its future. This paper aims to consider three research questions: How has service research evolved over the past 27 years? Which articles have most influenced the evolution of service research in the past 27 years? What are the most promising research themes for the future?

To answer these questions, the authors analyze the contents of 3,177 service research articles published in ten major academic journals between 1993 and August 2019. Multiple correspondence analysis reveals the evolution of key service research themes and their underlying relationships.

The research themes are organized in a growth–share matrix with four quadrants (stars, question marks, cash cows and pets) and also combine into four research clusters (human resource management, organizational behavior and strategy, technology, and operations and customer behavior and marketing). Together with a specified list of influential articles that have shaped the evolution of service research, these insights suggest an agenda for research.

Acknowledging the vast growth of service research, this study presents an up-to-date picture of the discipline and an agenda to stimulate continued research.

The purpose of this study is to examine the development of service quality research in hospitality and tourism from 1984 to 2014, to identify research gaps and to suggest directions for future research.

This review comprised three steps with the first being the generation of a structural map by using the online pathfinder network (PFNET) to identify potential research themes. The second research step involved an online literature search covering 2,211 academic journal articles to obtain basic information for planning an additional content investigation concerning the research themes. The final step was to investigate the content of the articles published in top-tier journals or frequently cited ones in three different stages (1984-1993, 1994-2003 and 2004-2014) to explore potential research topics.

The study identifies 17 research themes that comprise two main research themes, seven sub-stems, six outer-leaves and two little-leaves. The developments of service quality research in each theme are explored. The role of each theme in service quality study is revealed. Finally, this study identifies research opportunities for service quality research within each theme.

This study demonstrates how to use PFNET to effectively perform a systematic literature review. By referring to previous publications reviewed in this study, researchers can contribute by extending existing theories in their further research on the seventeen themes.

This study contributes a systematic literature review method by applying an online PFNET approach, provides a well-researched list of references for researchers conducting service quality research and highlights research gaps for researchers who plan to pursue service quality research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify research themes in service operations that have great potential for exciting and innovative conceptual and empirical work. To frame these research themes, the paper provides a systematic literature review of operations articles published in the Journal of Service Management (JOSM). The thorough review of published work in JOSM and proposed research themes are presented in hopes that they will inspire impactful research on service operations. These themes are further developed in a companion paper, “Service operations: what’s next?” (Field et al., 2018).

The JOSM Service Operations Expert Research Panel conducted a Delphi study to generate research themes where leading-edge research on service operations is being done or has yet to be done. Nearly 700 articles published in JOSM from its inception through 2016 were reviewed and classified by discipline focus. The subset of service operations articles was then further categorized according to the eight identified research themes plus an additional category that primarily represented traditional manufacturing approaches applied in service settings.

From the Delphi study, the following key themes emerged: service supply networks, evaluating and measuring service operations performance, understanding customer and employee behavior in service operations, managing servitization, managing knowledge-based service contexts, managing participation roles and responsibilities in service operations, addressing society’s challenges through service operations, and the operational implications of the sharing economy. Based on the literature review, approximately 20 percent of the published work in JOSM is operations focused, with earlier articles predominantly applying traditional manufacturing approaches in service settings. However, the percentage of these traditional types of articles has been steadily decreasing, suggesting a trend toward dedicated research frameworks and themes that are unique to the design and management of services operations.

The paper presents key research themes for advancing conceptual and empirical research on service operations. Additionally, a review of the past and current landscape of operations articles published in JOSM offers an understanding of the scholarly conversation so far and sets a foundation from which to build future research.

The purpose of this paper is to present exciting and innovative research questions in service operations that are aligned with eight key themes and related topics determined by the Journal of Service Management (JOSM) Service Operations Expert Research Panel. By offering a good number of such research questions, this paper provides a broad range of ideas to spur conceptual and empirical research related to service operations and encourage the continued creation of deep knowledge within the field, as well as collaborative research across disciplines that develops and incorporates insights from service operations.

Based on a Delphi study, described in the companion article, “Service Operations: What Have We Learned?,” the panel identified eight key research themes in service operations where leading-edge research is being done or has yet to be done (Victorino et al., 2018). In this paper, three or four topics within each theme are selected and multiple questions for each topic are proposed to guide research efforts. The topics and questions, while wide-ranging, are only representative of the many ongoing research opportunities related to service operations.

The field of service operations has many interesting research topics and questions that are largely unexplored. Furthermore, these research areas are not only increasingly integrative across multiple themes within operations but often transcend functional disciplines. This creates opportunities for ever more impactful research with a greater reach throughout the service system and suggests that service researchers, regardless of functional affiliation, can contribute to the ongoing conversation on the role of service operations in value creation.

Leveraging the collective knowledge of the JOSM Service Operations Expert Research Panel to expand on the research themes generated from the Delphi study, novel questions for future study are put forward. Recognizing that the number of potential research questions is virtually unlimited, summary questions by theme and topic are also provided. These questions represent a synopsis of the individual questions and can serve as a quick reference guide for researchers interested in pursuing new directions in conceptual and empirical research in service operations. This summary also serves as a framework to facilitate the formulation of additional research topics and questions.

This study aims to systematically review and conceptualise service-related research on refugees to identify gaps in the literature, derive future research avenues and stimulate interdisciplinary research and practice to improve well-being of refugees.

This study uses a systematic literature review (SLR) of 102 journal articles published or available online from 2010 to 2020.

Ten themes are identified across the three phases of the refugees’ service journey (entry, transition and exit). Most of the articles focus on the exit phase. One-third of the literature analyses refugees’ access and adaptation to health-care services. The dearth of research on other refugee services reflects the failure to attend to all aspects of service provision across all phases of the refugee service journey.

While the ten themes across the three phases require scholars’ and practitioners’ attention, different aspects of the SLR’s findings necessitate further investigation. To reinvigorate research and practice, and stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration, a novel Communities of Practice approach is suggested.

Practitioners and policymakers should place more focus on the entry and transition phases of the refugee service journey.

Lack of research and engagement with the first two phases of the refugee journey might come at the expense of refugees. More service support is needed to buffer the journey from homeland to host country.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this SLR on refugee-related services is the first of its kind from a service research perspective.

This editorial aims to organise the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into seven ServCollab service research themes to provide a way forward for service research that improves human and planetary life.

A conceptual approach is used that draws on observations from the scholarly experience of the editors.

This editorial offers seven research themes for service researchers: services that enable the WELL-BEING of the human species; services that provide OPPORTUNITY for all humans; services that manage RESOURCES for all humans; ECONOMIC services for work and growth for all humans; services from INSTITUTIONS that offer fair and sustainable living for all humans; service ecosystems with the PLANET; and COLLABORATION services for sustainable development partnerships.

Service scholars are urged to pursue collaborative research that reduces suffering, improves well-being and enables well-becoming for the sustainability and prosperity of Planet Earth.

This editorial provides service scholars with a new framework synthesising the SDGs into research themes that help focus further service research.

The present study aims to synthesize and conceptualize, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the current state of gamification knowledge in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector, providing a roadmap for future research recommendations for service research and practice.

The research is based on a systematic literature review and adopts a systematic quantitative approach to summarize existing evidence on gamification usage in the T&H sector, focusing on relevant service literature on gamification. The authors analyze 36 papers published between 2011 and 2019.

The authors synthesize existing knowledge into five themes describing gamification's role in T&H (Edutainment, Sustainable behavior, Engagement factors, Service provider-generated content and User-generated reviews). Then, a cross-analysis of the five themes reveals the pivotal elements (affordances, behavioral and psychological outcomes, and benefits) generated by gamification mechanics in T&H, simultaneously highlighting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The review identifies critical issues affecting gamification research and provides a future research agenda, considering opportunities for T&H and service research.

The study provides the first SLR investigating gamification in T&H. The findings present potential implications and relevant insights for T&H contributing to the construction of a more holistic understanding of gamification adoption in service research.

This paper is part of the Special Issue series Improving Life on Planet Earth – A Call to Action for Service Research to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This paper aims to provide the groundwork for Service Research Theme 2 – services that provide OPPORTUNITY for all humans. Service Research Theme 2 comprises SDG4, quality education; SDG5, gender equality; and SDG10, reduced inequalities and seeks to mobilize ServCollab’s aspirations to reduce human suffering, improve human well-being and enable well-becoming.

A scoping review appraising existing service research related to SDG4, SDG5 and SDG10 was conducted, establishing interlinkages, identifying patterns within each SDG and then assembling a research agenda for service researchers.

The scoping review identifies 18 patterns in service research (six patterns per SDG) pertaining to Service Research Theme 2. Common patterns among the SDG4, SDG5 and SDG10 included underrepresentation, consumer-centricity, the absence of explicit SDG linkages, the predominance of one theoretical anchor and the preference for quantitative studies, particularly surveys. Overall, the scoping review found that service research related to Service Research Theme 2 is patchy in that it is overdeveloped in some topics, methodologies and methods yet underdeveloped or silent in others.

The high-level research problem of Service Research Theme 2 is as follows: How have services provided OPPORTUNITY for all humans? This paper analyzes patterns in service research and, from these patterns, assembles a research agenda that sparks and guides further research.

Service ecosystems are becoming an important domain of joint value creation and resource integration, and the literature in the field is burgeoning. The recent growth in the literature warrants consolidating the findings of the existing literature, summarizing the recent development and identifying avenues for more impactful future research on the topic. This study aims to map the service ecosystems research domain and synthesize insights by integrating qualitative content analysis with quantitative data analysis.

This paper uses algorithmic bibliometric review (quantitative) with VOSviewer and R-package and content analysis (qualitative) on 119 service ecosystems papers published between 2003 and 2020.

The bibliometric analysis uncovers the critical research domains, knowledge trajectories, influential authors and journals and author networks in the field. The content analysis identifies the four most important research themes (value creation, change triggers, strategic and entrepreneurial action and institutional embeddedness and agency) and provides an integrative view of the dynamics among these themes. The authors also find the need for more empirical and theory grounded research around these four themes. Furthermore, based on the review, the authors discuss the disciplinary identity of the service ecosystems field and suggest interesting future research opportunities, along with ideas for useful empirical approaches and theoretical extensions.

This study’s comprehensive analysis offers an overview of the evolution and identity of the service ecosystems research and identifies several promising opportunities for future research on service ecosystems.

Exoskeletons are characterized as wearable, mechanical orthoses that augment the physical performance of the wearer, enhance productivity and employee well-being when used in value producing contexts. However, limited research involving exoskeleton usage by service employees in frontline contexts has been undertaken within service research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of exoskeleton research undertaken within the context of value-producing roles, introduce exoskeletons conceptually to the service research domain, provide new conceptualizations of service exchange interactions involving physically augmented service actors and propose future avenues of exoskeleton research in alignment with key service theories.

A multi-disciplinary structured literature review based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses method was undertaken across a variety of literature fields. A final selection of n = 25 papers was selected for analysis from an initial sample of N = 3,537. Given the emergent nature of exoskeleton research and the variety of methodology types used between literature fields, a thematic analysis approach was used for analysing identified papers.

The literature review identified four main themes within role-focused exoskeleton research. These themes informed proposals for future exoskeleton research with respect to key service theories and typologies. The findings demonstrate that the presence of an exoskeleton changes the behaviours and interactions of service employees. The augmented social presence AugSP typology is conceptualized to explain the influences of human enhancement technologies (HETs) within service actor interactions.

This research introduces the AugSP typology to conceptualize the impacts that exoskeletons and HETs impose within technologically mediated service interactions and provides a service-specific definition of exoskeleton technology to guide future service research involving the technology.