Virtual Communities of Practice Research Overview

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Managing Research in Services Themes,Tips,
Take-ways and Doggy-bags Ko de Ruyter Maastricht
University The Netherlands
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www.marketingsite.nl
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Gotta have a model the Virtuous Circle
Source Community Intelligence Labs, 2002
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How to interpret this circle?scan the journals
for

• New ways of organizing boundary-spanning
  structures
• Increased use of technology-mediated service
  delivery
• New types of service encounters
• Unleashing creativity, thats the real challenge

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Unleashing creativity, thats the real
challenge(and you get to do cool research)

• The power of technologies is fueling research
  opportunities
• Butdo not get carried away from theoretical
  anchor points
• Remember, not every reviewer will know about
  service delivery in snow boarding virtual
  communities
• Can anybody cite 20 papers on e-services
  published in the top journals this year?
• Keep focused on the contribution!

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Borrowing creatively from other disciplines

• Services by definition is a multi-disciplinary
  field
• There is a lot of stuff going on in neighbouring
  disciplines
• Some of this can be adapted directly to fit your
  purpose, some needs a little bit of unleashing
  the creativity

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Economies of scale and scope

• Most journals are cutting back on the number of
  pp and my attention span as a reviewer is
  decreasing!
• What is the contribution?
• There is no room for wall-to-wall models
• Yet, programmatic, nomological networks do have
  advantages (left-overs taste great the next day)
• Manage research from a data-base perspective

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A data-base

• Containes a large number of data fields
• Combines different types of data
  (cross-sectional-longitudinal, customer-employee
  perceptions, subjective-objective data)
• Lobby for the creation of a data-base of
  respondents at your school

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Work with industry

• A well-developed idea is easy to sell, just do
  not expect any money
• Practitioners sometimes do have well-developed
  ideas as well!
• You have access to a reality check, real
  respondents, technological support, internal
  databases and maybe more

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Work with (external) experts

• Again, a well-developed idea is easy to sell,
  just expect to do a lot of the work in the
  initial stage
• Network at conferences, explore your supervisors
  network. Try to find somebody who is willing to
  collaborate (most famous service researches are
  friendly and approachable!)
• If you cant beat them, ask the econometricians
  to join you!

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Heres the bottom line
Getting published is

• necessary for your career
• necessary to engage in a dialogue with other
  academics
• necessary for your teaching
• necessary to improve your work
• and probably the most frustrating aspect of
  early academic life!

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Difficulties (thats what they call opportunities)

• Many different journals
• Many different editorial practices
• Arbitrary?!
• the big names secret handshake
• Nationality/university reputation
• Coping with reviewers comments, they will raise
  the Contribution issue!

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Publish-dont perish strategy

• Manage publications as a portfolio As are the
  greatest, Bs are still great, but also realize
  that focused Cs are great reputation builders!
• Writing is behaviorlike other behavior, the more
  often you write, the better youll get at it!
• Be alert for special issues
• Scan a wider population than just marketing
  journals (OB, Psych, IS, Dec.Sciences,
  Operations)

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Take-aways

• Use any chance to present your work
• Select the journal before you start writing
• The C-word Contribution!
• Ask others to read your article (strategic
  scholars)
• Spend a lot of time on the referee report!
• See it as a learning process

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and doggy-bags

• At a 3 acceptance rate, it pays to leave it for
  a little while
• If you get rejected, put it in the fridge
• Heat up the stuff, try another marketing journal
• Try another journal in a totally different field
  (not at the same time, thats a serious no-no)
• Spice it up, with additional analyses
• Try the same journal, after an editor change

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Questions
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Thank you for your attention!