Abstract
In the practice of designing and engineering business systems, work is often defined and represented by a series of activities comprised of discrete tasks performed in a prescribed sequence, within a particular timeframe and set in the context of a particular technology. These elements are often reduced to a set of controlled system inputs and outputs, ignoring the complex interactions that need to be supported in highly collaborative work systems endemic of service systems . It is our position that designing and engineering service -based systems requires a new approach to understanding the interactions between the people, information technology and activities needed to enable services. We have approached service system design from the perspective of investigating and understanding work practices as the basis for system innovation . As such, our focus is on understanding what people actually do in practice, including their use of information, tools, methods and the relationships amongst these elements. This paper describes a practice-based approach for investigating work in service organizations. We argue for a need to understand work from the practice perspective, describe our practice-based approach, present a new way to represent work using practice diagrams, provide a case study as an example of our approach and make recommendations for future research.
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Notes
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Acknowledgment: Brian Tsao, a summer intern and University of California Berkeley graduate student, helped us collect and analyze the data. We thank Brian for his methodological diligence and thoughtful analysis.
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Kieliszewski, C.A., Bailey, J.H., Blomberg, J. (2010). A Service Practice Approach. In: Maglio, P., Kieliszewski, C., Spohrer, J. (eds) Handbook of Service Science. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1628-0_13
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