Some Cultural Issues in Service Systems

1
Some Cultural Issues in Service Systems

• Milagritos Gonzales, UPRM
• Paul Maglio, IBM
• Rik Warren, AFRL

2
Collected Issues Distributed Cognition View

• Cultural effects on teamwork and decision making
• Is acculturation necessary and to what degree
  and in what direction?
• Difference/Effect of company culture and local
  culture is company culture enough?
• Design services based on delivery- or client-side
  culture
• Differ between for-profit and non-profit
  services?
• Under-communication between clients and providers
  leads to understanding in terms of cultural
  defaults
• Field experiments on appropriate cultural
  adaptations for service delivery processes and
  services overall for understanding but also for
  piloting and testing

3
On Service Systems

• Service system entities are configurations of
  people, technology, information, and
  organizations that offer value propositions to
  other systems.
• Service systems are value-co-creating
  arrangements of service system entities.
• Service systems are cognitive systems distributed
  across entities.

• Developing mechanisms for systematic service
  system innovation and improvement means
  developing principles and practices for
  understanding and improving these distributed
  cognitive (and computational) systems.
• 'Cognition' observed in everyday practice is
  distributed -- stretched over, not divided among
  -- mind, body, activity and culturally organized
  settings (which include other actors).
• - Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice.
  Cambridge University Press.

4
Gaps Model of Service Quality
Adapted from Parasuraman A., L.L. Berry and V.A..
Zeithaml, (1990), Understanding Measuring and
Improving Service Quality Findings from a
Multiphase Research Program, The Free Press.
5
Gaps Model of Service Quality
Culture
Adapted from Parasuraman A., L.L. Berry and V.A..
Zeithaml, (1990), Understanding Measuring and
Improving Service Quality Findings from a
Multiphase Research Program, The Free Press.