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As service robots increasingly interact with customers at the service encounter, they will inevitably become an integral part of employee's work environment. This research investigates frontline employee's perceptions of collaborative service robots (CSR) and introduces a new framework, willingness to collaborate (WTC), to better understand employee–robot interactions in the workplace.

Drawing on appraisal theory, this study employed an exploratory research approach to investigate frontline employees' cognitive appraisal of service robots and their WTC with their nonhuman counterparts in service contexts. Data collection consisted of 36 qualitative problem-centered interviews. Following an iterative thematic analysis, the authors introduce a research framework of frontline employees' WTC with service robots.

First, this study demonstrates that the interaction between frontline employees and service robots is a multistage appraisal process based on adoption-related perceptions. Second, it identifies important attributes across three categories (employee, robot and job attributes) that provide a foundation to understand the appraisal of CSRs. Third, it presents four employee personas (supporter, embracer, resister and saboteur) that provide a differentiated perspective of how service employee–robot collaboration may differ.

The article identifies important factors that enable and restrict frontline service employees' (FSEs’) WTC with robots.

This is the first paper that investigates the appraisal of CSRs from the perspective of frontline employees. The research contributes to the limited research on human–robot collaboration and expands existing technology acceptance models that fall short to explain post-adoptive coping behavior of service employees in response to service robots in the workplace.

Robots are predicted to have a profound impact on the service sector. The emergence of robots has attracted increasing interest from business scholars and practitioners alike. In this article, we undertake a systematic review of the business literature about the impact of service robots on customers and employees with the objective of guiding future research.

We analyzed the literature on service robots as they relate to customers and employees in business journals listed in the Financial Times top 50 journals plus all journals covered in the cross-disciplinary SERVSIG literature alerts.

The analysis of the identified studies yielded multiple observations about the impact of service robots on customers (e.g. overarching frameworks on acceptance and usage of service robots; characteristics of service robots and anthropomorphism; and potential for enhanced and deteriorated service experiences) and service employees (e.g. employee benefits such as reduced routine work, enhanced productivity and job satisfaction; potential negative consequences such as loss of autonomy and a range of negative psychological outcomes; opportunities for human–robot collaboration; job insecurity; and robot-related up-skilling and development requirements). We also conclude that current research on service robots is fragmented, is largely conceptual in nature and focused on the initial adoption stage. We feel that more research is needed to build an overarching theory. In addition, more empirical research is needed, especially on the long(er)-term usage service robots on actual behaviors, the well-being and potential downsides and (ethical) risks for customers and service employees.

Our review focused on the business and service literature. Future work may want to include additional literature streams, including those in computer science, engineering and information systems.

This article is the first to synthesize the business and service literature on the impact of service robots on customers and employees.

The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.

This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.

Extant research mainly focused on potentially negative customer responses to service robots. In contrast, this study is one of the first to explore a service context where service robots are likely to be the preferred service delivery mechanism over human frontline employees. Specifically, the authors examine how customers respond to service robots in the context of embarrassing service encounters.

This study employs a mixed-method approach, whereby an in-depth qualitative study (study 1) is followed by two lab experiments (studies 2 and 3).

Results show that interactions with service robots attenuated customers' anticipated embarrassment. Study 1 identifies a number of factors that can reduce embarrassment. These include the perception that service robots have reduced agency (e.g. are not able to make moral or social judgements) and emotions (e.g. are not able to have feelings). Study 2 tests the base model and shows that people feel less embarrassed during a potentially embarrassing encounter when interacting with service robots compared to frontline employees. Finally, Study 3 confirms that perceived agency, but not emotion, fully mediates frontline counterparty (employee vs robot) effects on anticipated embarrassment.

Service robots can add value by reducing potential customer embarrassment because they are perceived to have less agency than service employees. This makes service robots the preferred service delivery mechanism for at least some customers in potentially embarrassing service encounters (e.g. in certain medical contexts).

This study is one of the first to examine a context where service robots are the preferred service delivery mechanism over human employees.

Commercial entities (e.g. health and life insurance, airlines and supermarkets) in different countries have recently begun to introduce wearable technology as part of the consumer journey and as a means of enhancing the business value chain. While a firm’s decision to adopt such new technologies as wearable devices is often based on financial factors such as return on investment, costs and impact on profits, consumers may hold a different attitude toward the value of using smart wearables and sharing their personal data as part of their business-client relationships. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer perceptions of and reactions to persuaded self-tracking (PST) – a practice in which businesses actively encourage consumers to monitor, collect and share personal biometric data through wearable technologies in exchange for personalized incentives and rewards.

Using a qualitative research approach and a purposeful sampling method, the authors conducted personal in-depth interviews with 24 consumers (both users and non-users of wearable devices). Interviews were recorded and transcribed, resulting in 600 pages of transcripts comprising more than 203,000 words. Data coding and analysis were facilitated by using NVivo.

Consumers’ assessment of PST is based on perceived value-in-use, privacy/security concerns and perceived fairness/justice, resulting in four types of reactions to adopt or use PST (embracing, considering, debating and avoiding). Specifically, the authors identified two individual determinants (intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation) and four firm-related determinants (design of wearable device, assurance, transparency and controllability) that influence consumer perceptions of PST.

Results of this study have implications for both vendors of wearable devices and firms trying to leverage smart wearables in their value chains. Identifying consumers’ perceptions, as well as barriers and enablers of acceptance, will help firms to more effectively design and develop wearable device-based services, thus gaining consumer support for using fitness trackers. The primary limitation of the study is that using a thematic analysis method diminishes the generalizability of our findings.

This study addresses an under-researched area: the integration of wearable technologies in a firm’s value chain through the lens of the consumers. This study is one of the first, according to authors’ knowledge, to investigate consumer perceptions of PST.

Companies in diverse branches offer a variety of service alternatives that typically differ in terms of the degree to which customers are actively involved in service delivery processes. The purpose of this paper is to explore potential differences in consumers’ reactions to service failures across services provided by a service employee (i.e. full-services) and services that require customers’ active involvement (i.e. self-services).

Two 2 (full-service vs self-service) × 2 (no service failure vs service failure) scenario-based experiments in technological and non-technological contexts (i.e. ticket purchase and furniture assembly) were conducted.

Study results reveal that although service failures have a similar negative impact on satisfaction across both full-services and self-services, in the self-service context, the negative effect on the willingness to use the same service delivery mode again is attenuated.

By emphasizing the role of customers’ active involvement in the service delivery process, the study extends previous knowledge regarding customer response to service failures in different service settings.

By highlighting that self-service customers’ future behavioral intentions are less severely affected by service failures, the authors present an additional feature of customer involvement in service delivery processes that goes beyond the previously recognized advantages.

Despite the abundance of research on the effects of failure attributions, previous studies have predominantly examined main effects of attributions on customer responses, such that insights into potential moderating effects of failure attributions on established relationships – as investigated in this study – are still scarce.

Original equipment manufacturers offer maintenance services such as remote diagnostics to extend their portfolio. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate requirements and expectations regarding remote services (RSs) for maintaining complex high-tech equipment from a users’ point of view.

A qualitative interview study based on 30 interviews and observations at 11 organizations in the healthcare industry was conducted in order to get a holistic understanding of requirements and expectations of the new service technology.

This study shows that the focus on providing high-technology services is not sufficient to increase customer's usage, soft factors such as personal interaction, integration, and individualization are main expectations for customers in the medical equipment industry. The expectations are concentrated in seven propositions.

The interviews were conducted only in the healthcare industry. Even though is it possible to generalize the findings and transfer them to other sectors, a large-scale empirical survey should be conducted in different industries to verify the qualitative results.

A framework for manager and service provider is set up that can help to improve the service offerings according to specific customer expectations.

The paper provides an original perspective on a new service technology that facilitates remote maintenance of complex high-tech equipment. Through in-depth interviews, the author generates valuable insights that help to advance RS technologies.

This study aims to identify articles examining human-robot interaction and the effects of robotic systems on employment.

In this research, electronic searches were performed for articles published between 2000 and 2022 in Emerald, Springer, PubMed, Science Direct, Wiley and Google Scholar. In the searches of robotic systems with keywords such as “motivation, job satisfaction, job loss, performance, job giving,” 5 quantitative and 5 qualitative studies were included in the systematic review. The selected research was conducted using the Johanna Briggs Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies Checklist from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical evaluation lists and the JBI Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research, depending on their type. The included studies are mostly on employee-robot collaboration.

Although the majority of the articles examined in this study are included in keywords or titles, it is determined that there is a gap in descriptive quantitative studies in the literature on the effects of employee-robot collaboration, robotic systems and robotic systems on variables such as motivation, job satisfaction, job loss, performance and employment, although they do not mention a framework that directly investigates human-robot interaction and the effects of robotic systems on employment.

There are several limitations in this study. One of them is that, although the databases are comprehensively scanned, only studies published in English between 2000 and 2022 are included in the systematic review. Another limitation is the heterogeneity between studies.

As a result of the authors’ findings, the practical effects of the research are reflected as follows: It serves as a guide for future studies to fill the gap in the field, especially for academics and researchers working in the field of social sciences on robotic systems and intelligent automations. In addition to the qualitative studies on this subject, there is a need for the use of robotic systems in the field of human resources and management and quantitative studies with more sample sizes, especially at the corporate (firms) and individual (employees) level. Considering that the number of studies on this subject is very insufficient, this research is important in terms of shedding light on future studies.

The authors believe that the impact of robotic systems on employment is one of the few conceptual articles that systematically examines 6 dimensions (job satisfaction, performance, job loss, employment, motivation, employment).