The Palgrave Handbook of Service Management

This handbook provides an innovative, thorough overview of service management. It draws together an impressive, international group of leading scholars who offer a truly global perspective, exploring current literature and laying out guidance for future research. Beginning with defining service as a perspective on value creation, and service management as “a set of organizational competencies for enabling and realizing value creation through service,” it then moves on to follow the evolution of service research. From there, the book is structured into six main themes: perspectives on service management; service strategy; service leadership and transition; service design and innovation; service interaction; quality and operations; and service management and technology.

This book is valuable reading for academics, lecturers, and students studying service management, operations management, and service research.

“A must-have book for those who want to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of service management and its recent evolution and application. The authors have involved the world's best researchers, offering a comprehensive, extraordinary and innovative systematization of the discipline, with a modern, interdisciplinary and intercultural interpretation. The reading is also enriched by the discussion of very stimulating cases and best practices. Thank you, Bo and Bard, for this enjoyable, effective and extremely useful work!”

-Alberto Pastore, Professor of Management, Sapienza Università di Roma. Founder and former President of the Italian Society of Management (SIMA), Italy

“Bo Edvardsson was one of the pioneers of service research, and his Center at Karlstad University has played a central role in the field's development. The new Handbook of Service Management (co-edited with Nordic colleague Bård Tronvoll), provides a grand tour of some of the main areas of service research, with the help of a stellar author list, including such well-known service researchers as David Bowen, Rod Brodie, Ben Schneider, Steve Vargo and Jochen Wirtz.”
-Roland T. Rust, Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, Executive Director, University of Maryland's Center for Excellence in Service, USA

“The world needs to understand that service management is not just managing a set of activities and tasks, nor just managing an ecosystem of actors, structures and behaviours, but managing the logic that makes a system exist and continues to be viable. That logic encompasses many facets and Professors Edvardsson and Tronvoll have accomplished the challenging task of bringing together world leading scholars to advance that logic in a coherent way for scholars and practitioners. Thank you and Congratulations!”
-Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service Systems and the Director of the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation at WMG, University of Warwick, UK

“This book symbolizes the maturity of Service Management and its unifying role in the field of business. A unique treasure, this book provides a holistic perspective of the latest knowledge in service research and practice from a variety of scholars and leaders across the globe. While presenting readers with a bird’s - eye view of the field, it simultaneously offers an in-depth examination of nascent knowledge in ‘service’. Given the unifying role of ‘service’ in the marketplace, this book should be a must read for all scholars in the field of business.”
-Jay Kandampully, Professor of Service Management in the Department of Human Sciences and Editor in chief Journal of ServiceManagement, Ohio State University, USA

“We read some books but then never return to them. We buy other books but never get around to reading them. The Handbook of Service Management is a book that academics who study service management and managers who work in service management will use again and again and again. It is a “ KEEPER” book, an impressive compilation of virtually all topics relevant to service management today, from customer experience with human providers to customer experience with robots, from service design to service recovery. Service scholars from throughout the world review existing literatures while introducing many new ideas in this ultimate reference volume. Whether you seek an introduction to a specific topic -or a refresh- the Handbook of Service Management should be on your book shelf, ready for you when you need it.”
-Leonard Berry, University Distinguished Professor of Marketing and M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership, Regents Professor Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, USA

“I greatly enjoyed reading the Handbook of Service Management. It made me see the field of service management from a fresh perspective, and truly excited me about the future of this rapidly advancing field. Is there a golden age of service coming? Let's all hope so - and the seeds of the theories required are well surveyed in this timely book. In a rapidly changing and interconnected world of service systems that we all depend on for our lives and livelihoods, especially in these pandemic times, Edvardsson and Tronvoll have masterfully orchestrated the top interdisciplinary thought-leaders across industries and cultures to share their deep insights about the global service ecosystem and the competencies that leaders should invest in learning to create successful outcomes. I also recommend this book as an outstanding introduction for those starting their service journey - whether they are coming from a management, engineering, technology, social sciences, design and arts, or public policy perspective. For industry and societal leaders as well as experienced service researchers and newcomers to the field, the Handbook of Service Management is a highly recommended read about a fast changing field where the most valued outcomes are on the verge of becoming our co-created reality.”
-Jim Spohrer, PhD and Director, Cognitive Opentech Group (COG), IBM Research Almaden, USA

“The business environment is an increasingly complex system of stakeholders, technologies, and institutions, and all these elements are changing rapidly. The key to success in such an environment is to generate deep understanding of how each stakeholder generates value-in-use in their life- or workflow. The Handbook of Service Management is an excellent guide for this, as it allows leading scholars globally to cover various aspects of this new reality. By taking a multi-disciplinary approach, building on a wide theoretical base, it provides a “smorgasbord” of perspectives that also builds bridges between theory and practice.”
-Kaj Storbacka, Hanken Foundation Professor, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki Finland

“The Handbook of Service Management is a comprehensive collection of state-of-the-art knowledge from the vast field of service management. Bo Edvardsson and Bård Tronvoll have done a huge job to knit together important aspects of the field covering everything from strategic issues, service quality and value creation to innovation and design, technology and digitalization. This handbook offers valuable reading for persons new to the field and equally much to person who want to familiarize themselves with any of its subfields. The handbook nicely reflects current research. It can be recommended as both an introduction to service management and source of inspiration for further research.”
-Christian Grönroos, Professor Emeritus, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki Finland

“There is currently much discussion about the contribution of services to value creation and employment in the future. Without a doubt, services are already the economic backbone in many countries in terms of added value and employment. And if we think of our societal and ecological challenges ahead, as well as the potential of digitization, completely new service-oriented or interactive models of value creation will be developed in the future.
What service research can contribute to service-oriented value creation becomes impressively clear in the new “Handbook of Service Management” by Bo Edvardsson and Bård Tronvoll. In their new manual, current research results on 6 central service topics arepresented in 48 articles, which in particular show the exciting further development of these topics.
In summary, it can be said that the new manual has put together contributions from many high-ranking experts who present new research results and practices on service management from different disciplinary perspectives. A very inspiring read.”
-Walter Ganz, Managing Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, Stuttgart Germany

“The Service Management Handbook edited by Edvardsson and Tronvoll promises to be an important base of service knowledge for scholars and managers in services going forward. It is a comprehensive and up-to-date volume covering important topics in service management, organized into six highly relevant and current themes. The authors of the forty-eight chapters are respected experts in service research representing all relevant disciplines and a diversity of countries and cultures. The Service Management Handbook should be required reading and an essential reference for all serious scholars and progressive managers in the service field. Bravo!”
-Mary Jo Bitner, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and former Director of the Center for Services Leadership, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, USA

​Bo Edvardsson, is Professor of Business Administration and founder of the Service Research Centre, Karlstad University Sweden.

Bård Tronvoll is Professor of Business administration at the Service Research Centre, Karlstad University Sweden, and at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway.