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Mobile peer‐to‐peer communications is an essential phase in the evolution of mobile communications technologies, motivating this research which aims to focus on how established industry stakeholders and new entrants can adapt themselves to the new situation.

Based on existing literature, the authors identified three distinctive evolution paths for mobile peer‐to‐peer communications and developed an analysis framework for their comparison. The authors validated the analysis by conducting a questionnaire study among domain experts, and analyzed its results using statistical analysis.

Internet‐driven evolution has high value proposition, is profitable and has subscription fees as an important revenue model. Telecom‐driven evolution creates value, leverages markets, leverages competence, is likely to encounter regulatory intervention and benefits all customer segments. Proprietary evolution has a successful revenue model, results in alliances of competitors and is competence‐enhancing to mobile device vendors.

Future work consists mainly of analyzing quantitatively the implications of the new technologies when they become readily available and evaluating the value analysis framework in other applicable cases.

Internet‐driven evolution enables new business opportunities to independent service operators and equipment vendors by enabling opportunities in profiting from sales of advanced devices and networks. Telecom‐driven evolution benefits mostly incumbent mobile network operators. Proprietary evolution enables limited competition against incumbent actors by independent service operators.

This study is one of the first journal publications on mobile peer‐to‐peer communications from a holistic techno‐economic point of view, beneficial to both academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to provide strong theoretical and technical support for the dynamic evolution of service system in “Cluster Supply Chain”(CSC), which can deal with two kinds of context changes: the internal service component changes and the external customer requirement changes.

A “feedback-based” evolution mechanism of service system for CSC is proposed in this study. By means of the feedback update of enterprise service’s Quality of Service (QoS) attribute and the adjustment of the assumed QoS evaluation model, the evolution of service system can be achieved to suit the dynamic market demands.

Results of the study suggest: by means of the “feed-back” evolution mechanism of service system, the enterprises in CSC can handle the context changes effectively to maintain the optimized operation status.

The implementation of evolution mechanism in service system can keep the effectiveness of enterprise service composition to face the frequent service component changes and the unpredictable market turbulence.

This paper proposes a method to realize the autonomous evolution of service system in CSC, which can support the flexibility and adaptability of enterprise service composition in the changing environment.

The advent of the new retail era witnessed the consumers’ demand shift from on the traditional product quality to on the full supply chain service quality, and product service and service manufacturing is gradually taking shape. The purpose of this paper is to propose whether there is a “quality bridge” in the dynamic evolution process of retail service supply chain (RSSC) and discuss the system role, steady-state characteristics and dynamic evolution mechanism of service quality in this dynamic evolution process.

This paper proposes the dissipation system structure of the RSSC under the steady-state quality constraint, constructs a Markov chain model (MCM) for the evolution of the service quality of RSSC, and tests the objective existence of the steady-state distribution of the service quality by taking Chinese HJ retail enterprises as samples.

The research value of this study is summarized as follows. The research finds that the evolution of service quality of RSSC is a dynamic and non-linear growth process, which has significant characteristics of complex adaptability and steady-state convergence. The study finds that the quality evolution process of the RSSC is a steady-state convergence process, and there is a steady-state distribution of quality in its co-evolution, in which different process input levels have a significant positive impact on the stable level of quality state. The study finds that the steady state of quality plays a crucial role in the collaborative evolution of the RSSC, that is, when the service quality reaches a certain steady state distribution, the operating efficiency and profit level of the whole chain will show an “explosive” growth trend.

Quality bridge, an original concept in this paper, represents the role of quality steady-state in the operation of RSSC. Based on Markov chain and system simulation tools, this paper verifies the existence of steady-state service quality and its positive effect on the co-evolution and sustainable development of RSSC. When the service quality reaches a certain steady distribution, the operating efficiency and income level of the whole chain will show n trend of explosive growth.

Information technologies are changing the service paradigm. This paper aims to provide a concise review on technology-enabled service evolution in tourism.

The paper is based on a review of relevant literature.

The past evolution of service delivery is summarized in three stages: service, e-service and m-service. The fourth stage of service evolution is predicted to be “a-service” with three features: service automation and human–robot interaction, artificial intelligence and big data and smart travel experience.

This paper provides a brief overview of service evolution under the impact of technology. It originally identifies the four stages of service evolution in tourism.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand and study the architecture and system characteristics of the underlying support platform for crowd system, by recognizing the characteristics of service internet is similar to the coordination characteristics between the massive units in the underlying platform of crowd system and studying the form, nature and guidelines of the service internet.

This paper points out the connection between the underlying support platform of crowd system and service internet, describes the framework and ideas for researching service internet and then proposes key technologies and solutions for service internet architecture and system characteristics.

The research unit in the underlying support platform of crowd system can be regarded as a service unit. Therefore, the platform can also be regarded as service internet to some extent. The ideas and technical approaches for the study of service internet’s form, criteria and characteristics are also provided.

According to this paper, relevant staff can be guided to better build the underlying support platform of crowd system. And it can provide a highly robust and sustainable platform for research studies of crowd science and engineering in the future.

This paper aims to investigate the eHealth ecosystem’s evolution during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its effects on the progression of care for patients with chronic cardiovascular disease.

To attain the aim of the study, this study chose to adopt a qualitative method that matches the complexity of the issue. The study was conducted in a real context through 44 face-to-face semi-structured interviews of key informants at different levels of the Italian eHealth service ecosystem, via Microsoft Teams. The interviews were carried out from June 2020 to January 2021. In this research, we adopted an abductive approach that enabled a process where the theoretical framework and the data analysis evolved at the same time.

The study results were used to develop a conceptual framework that considers the key factors enabling and constraining the evolutionary process of the eHealth service ecosystem. In particular, the drivers that emerged from the study were actor role empowerment, actor–network engagement and resource reconfiguration while the inhibitors were inter- and intra-actor misalignment, resource myopia and the platformisation gap. The findings also revealed the pivotal role of the meso level in the development of the eHealth service ecosystem, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

By adopting a service ecosystem perspective, this paper contributes, at both a theoretical and a managerial level, to a better understanding of the dynamics related to the diffusion of eHealth. The study identifies the main issues that researchers, managers and policymakers should address to support the evolution of the eHealth service ecosystem, with particular regard to chronic cardiovascular disease.

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 paper is to examine the impact of economic development on culture and the significance of cultural change on the evolution of offshoring of services and knowledge‐based activities.

The paper offers a conceptual model that links economic development, national cultural predispositions, and the future of offshoring service and knowledge functions. It builds on a range of academic literatures within these core areas to derive a set of propositions that offer insights into the manner in which the relative success and evolution of offshoring service and knowledge work would be impacted by a country's economic development posture and its cultural roots and value systems. The model presented here is also well complemented by examples from real offshoring projects to offer the reader a comprehensive picture of the central propositions put forth.

Several propositions, formulated at the multidisciplinary intersection of service operations management, strategy, and international studies, provide ample opportunities for further discipline‐specific and cross‐disciplinary examination of complex interactions of economic development, culture, and offshoring approaches.

This form of conceptual research provides the basis for more rigorous theory development and testing. The aim of the conceptual analysis was to begin linking nascent research in the area of service and knowledge offshoring to an area of research that examines the links between economic development and culture.

Global operations managers dealing with extended service value chains that include offshore service providers must not only focus on dealing with cultural differences but they must also identify requisite cultural attributes for evolving service center roles.

By integrating perspectives from service operations management, strategy, and international studies, the paper provides new perspectives on offshoring of service and knowledge operations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of key research contributions on the topic of service strategies in manufacturing by focusing on descriptions of the phenomenon and theoretical explanations of its evolution and financial consequences.

A summary analysis of the extant literature is provided. Valuable contributions and fundamental methodological issues are identified and discussed. Challenges, limitations and directions for future research avenues are also highlighted.

As a result of the analysis and discussion presented, the concept of service‐driven manufacturing is integrated through the provision, evolution and impact of services in industrial settings.

The paper contains guidelines for manufacturing managers interested in the evolution from products to services in different industries.

The paper is expected to be used as a relevant source of ideas and guidance for all those interested in doing research in services strategies in manufacturing.

Offshoring has been studied widely in the literature on strategic management and international business. However, apart from its consideration as an administrative activity, scant attention has been paid to the offshoring of the human resource (HR) function. Research in this regard has instead focussed on outsourcing (Reichel and Lazarova, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of companies’ decisions to offshore HR activities. It adapts the outsourcing model of Baron and Kreps (1999) by including the HR offshoring phenomenon and a dynamic perspective.

While the analysis is mostly conceptual, the authors ground the author’s arguments in offshoring data from the Offshoring Research Network, to explore whether the drivers for offshoring HR differ from the drivers for offshoring other administrative activities. The idiosyncrasy of the HR function is supported by the authors’ exploratory analysis and also by the descriptive case of a multinational and its experience with offshoring.

A coevolutionary model is proposed for understanding the behaviour of companies offshoring their HR activities. This study contends that companies should address their decision to offshore HR activities from a dynamic perspective, being aware of three processes that are in constant change: the evolution of the HR function, the evolution of service providers, and the evolution of offshoring decisions.

This study seeks to make a threefold contribution to the international business, strategy, and HR management disciplines.