The US economy - and economies of all industrialized nations - are made primarily of service jobs (about 80% of jobs in the US are service jobs), and the gross domestic product comes primarily from service (more than 70% in the US). Experts suggest that these numbers will only increase over time. So chances are that when you get out of school, you are going to be working in a service job or in the service sector.
Service science is the study of service, which can be broadly defined as actions that one takes on behalf of another (such as washing a car or managing web servers). But there really is no such thing as service science today - there is no single accepted, integrated, interdisciplinary scientific study of the service economy or of service jobs. Service science is more like a movement whose goal is to focus attention on service-related problems. In service science, the basic unit of analysis is the service system, a configuration of people, technologies, and other resources that interact with other service systems to create mutual value. Many systems can be viewed as service systems, including families, cities, and companies, among many others. Just as computer scientists work with formal models of algorithms and computation, someday service scientists will work with formal models of service systems.
More precisely, service is the application of resources (including competences, skills, and knowledge) to make changes that have value for another. For instance, in information technology (IT) outsourcing services, a service provider operates the computing infrastructure for a service client. The provider augments the client's capabilities, taking on responsibility for monthly service-level agreements and year-over-year productivity improvements. The formal representation and modeling of service systems is nascent, largely because of the complexity of modeling people, their knowledge, activities, and intentions. Service system complexity is a function of the number and variety of people, technologies, and organizations linked in the value creation networks, such as professional reputation systems of a single kind of knowledge worker or profession, work systems composed of multiple types of knowledge workers, enterprise systems, industrial systems, national systems, and even the global service system. Knowledge workers depend on their knowledge, tools, and social-organizational networks to solve problems, be productive, continually develop, and generate and capture value. Service science must combine formal models with models of human behavior to understand service systems.
Associate Adjunct Professor
Cognitive Science Program
University of California, Merced
Merced, CA USA 95344
email: pmaglio at ucmerced.edu