Special Session 1
Humanity in Service Work During a Time of Digital Transformation – Proposer Mahesh Subramony
Background and Aim of the Proposal: Disruptive advances in digitization, automation, and artificial intelligence are transforming the organizational frontlines by multiplying the interfaces and modes of interaction between organizations and their customers (Singh et al., 2017; van Doorn et al., 2023). As opposed to technological innovations in the past that fostered process efficiencies while highlighting the importance of employee-customer relationships, emerging agentic technology allows for the substitution or elimination of human interaction (Arnold & Marinova, 2023; Subramony et al., 2023). However, there is also evidence that customers continue to value humanness and emotional connections (in addition to immediacy and efficiency) within their service experience (Ostrom et al., 2021; Field et al., 2021). This raises a critical question: what should be the role of human workers (employees) in this rapidly evolving technology-driven service landscape? The aim of this special session is to explore this question and generate an interactive and thought-provoking discussion on future directions for research and practice within this domain.
Session Format. The proposed session will consist of: (a) three presentations that will highlight three themes in humanizing services [30 minutes], (b) an expert panel comprised of three scholars who examine the humanity-technology interface from unique standpoints (hospitality, strategic human resource management, and marketing) [45 minutes], and (c) interactive question-answer session with audience members.
Key Themes:
(a) Emerging employee competencies in the context of ubiquitous technology. Importance of various employee competencies that either complement technology or differentiate human-performed service from technology-interactions (e.g., accurate reading of emotions, responsiveness to varying customer needs, empathy, and emotional regulation).
(b) Differentiation through humanity in personalized services. Discussion of organizational structures and systems that dehumanize the customer experience and exploration of ways to increase humanness in organization-customer interactions.
(c) Actualizing the potential of human-technology (HUMTECH) synergies. Focus on the sociotechnical drivers of HUMTECH synergies, i.e., ways in which the interactions between frontline technology and employee effort can be combined in a seamless way to deliver enhanced customer experience.
Special Session 2
Serving the Human Needs of Refugees: Creating a Logic for Sharing the Earth
A ServCollab Special Session – Proposer Raymond Fisk
The modern refugee crisis is the result of chronic service system failures. There are more refugees today than ever, but systems for helping refugees are overwhelmed or completely lacking. To make this crisis appalling worse, many nations are using dehumanizing strategies to block refugees from being able to seek asylum in their countries. Such national behaviors are creating a serving humanity crisis throughout the world. To make these conditions more alarming, Vince (2022) has presented compelling logic that global warming trends will accelerate the refugee crisis. She argues that “… we need a globally managed effort that recognizes our shared humanity on this shared earth – we need lawful, safe, planned and facilitated migration.”
For this special session, ServCollab invited serviced research scholars who have studied the service system problems that worsen the refugee crisis and NGO refugee agency leaders who work directly with refugees seeking asylum. Since the QUIS conference is taking place in Rome, we focus our attention on the needs of refugees who perilously journey across the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Italy.
Session Chair: Dr. Samuel Petros Sebhatu, Karlstad University, Sweden
Guest Speaker: Dr. Abba Mussie Zerai Yosief, Catholic Priest, Montreal, Canada & Founder of Agenzia Habeshia
Agenzia Habeshia is an Italian refugee agency based in Rome.
Commentators: Dr. Silke Boenigk, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany & Dr. Sertan Kabadai, Fordham University, New York, New York, USA
Coauthors of several articles on refugees, including two ServCollab articles:
Boenigk, Silke, Raymond Fisk, Sertan Kabadayi, Linda Alkire, Lilliemay Cheung, Canan Corus, Jörg Finsterwalder, Aaron A. Kreimer, Nadina Luca, Mansour Omeira, Pallab Paul, Marcos F. Santos and Nina Smidt (2021), “Rethinking Service Systems and Public Policy: A Transformative Refugee Service Experience Framework,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 40 (2), 165-183.
Alkire, Linda, Laura Hesse, Amir Raki, Silke Boenigk, Sertan Kabadayi, Raymond P. Fisk and Andres Mora (2025), “From Theory to Practice: a Collaborative Approach to Social Impact Measurement and Communication,” European Journal of Marketing, Forthcoming.
ServCollab is a human services organization for “Serving Humanity Through Collaboration.” ServCollab develops research projects that establish foundational logic for helping researchers collaborate on solving humanity’s service systems problems.
Special Session 3
Digital health innovation: co-creating value, well-being, and health in an interconnected world – Proposer Erik Wastlund
In this special session, the aim is to further explore the challenges in creating tomorrow’s digital health services.
Digital health innovations have the potential to improve the health and well-being for citizens and at the same time reduce the financial burden of the public healthcare sector. Given the current demographic development, with an aging population, digital health innovations will play an increasingly important role in any future society. Even though the digital transformation of health and well-being services is already underway, the adoption rate of novel technology in health care is outpaced by the increase in service demands.
Why is it important from a service research perspective? Service research focuses on how citizens (i.e. users, patients) co-create value, well-being, and health and how this occurs in an interconnected world implies an important challenge.
A crucial aspect of digital health services is that they imply an opportunity to empower citizens to co-create their own health and well-being. Given the many barriers to adoption, it is necessary to build on the key enablers for successful service innovation and service delivery.
To successfully implement such services, it is paramount to understand the cyclic nature of digital health innovations. First of all, data has to be collected: digital health innovations typically build on real-time data being collected utilizing Internet of Things (IoT) or wearables. Secondly, by pooling a given individual’s data with that of all users it is possible to deliver data-driven personalized services. Thirdly, digital services can be delivered in a multitude of ways including health applications on smartphones as well as through social robots while at the same time collecting data to further personalize the service. On top of this cyclic process of digital innovations lies the citizen or patient experience. The rate of adoption of digital health services can only be increased by allowing for citizens to co-create value.
Keywords: Service research; Data-driven service innovation; IoT-based eHealth services: User experience of digital health services; Health applications; Social robots.
Special Session 4
Servicing the future – Proposers Line Lervik-Olsen (ac), Seidali Kurtmollaiev (bc), Tor Wallin Andreassen (c) and Nina Veflen (a)
(a) BI Norwegian Business School, (b) Kristiania, (c) Norwegian School of Economics
As the future of aging, digital, and environmentally challenged societies becomes increasingly uncertain, concerns for well-being across generations are rapidly growing. Innovation is one of the most powerful tools that can help service the future. However, understanding its potential impact on well-being requires the development of the customer perspective acknowledging that it is the customer who ultimately determines the value of innovation. In the Nordic countries, the customer perspective on innovation has gained significant attention and led to the establishment of the Innovation Index Coalition (IIC), which currently includes researchers from the US, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Spain and is expanding worldwide. The IIC’s overarching theme is examining how commercial, digital, and social innovation influence the well-being of different generations.
This session’s goal is to further develop the customer perspective on innovation. We will discuss the role of innovation in the aging society, and we invite submissions that focus on the meaning of commercial, social, and digital innovations for intergenerational well-being. Examples include, but should not be limited to, novel and less explored topics such as artificial intelligence in services, responsible aging, sensory marketing targeted at an aging population, and innovation at the ecosystem-level.
In addition, we will organize a panel discussing the relevance of service research theories in aging, digital, and environmentally challenged societies.
Keywords: customer perspective on innovation, digital innovation, social innovation, commercial innovation, aging population, intergenerational well-being, sensory marketing.
Special Session 5
Seeking Collaborative Wisdom with the Serving Humanity Paradigm – Proposer ServCollab
This special session contains two ServCollab presentations. The first presentation builds a collaborative wisdom logic to overcome our service system metacrisis and establishes the premise for a new paradigm. The second presentation develops a serving humanity paradigm as the first step toward regenerating human service systems. Overall, this session seeks to catalyze new collaborations and new research for helping service systems evolve long-term, sustainable, and regenerative solutions to the metacrisis.
Seeking Collaborative Wisdom in Our Service System Metacrisis – Presented by Raymond P. Fisk
The world faces a service system metacrisis—a convergence of interrelated crises spanning social, economic, technological, and ecological domains. Service systems are the foundational structures that sustain human well-being. However, service systems worldwide are struggling with growing complexity, incoherence, polarization, fragmentation, and unsustainable practices. This metacrisis is an interwoven web of challenges that require developing the collaborative wisdom necessary to untangle and regenerate these service systems.
This special session explores how wiser service systems can be cultivated to address these escalating service system challenges. We propose shared principles that prioritize well-being, justice, and ecological sustainability over short-term efficiency and profit. By fostering collaborative wisdom, we can co-create service solutions that bridge knowledge across disciplines, cultures, and nation-states, enabling transformative responses to the modern metacrisis.
Pioneering a Serving Humanity Paradigm: From State-Based Vulnerability to Citizen Well-Becoming – Presented by Qusay Hamdan and Raymond P. Fisk
Nation-state service systems often impose identities that exclude groups of humans and thereby cause severe state-based vulnerability. Overcoming these vulnerabilities requires a new paradigm, one that serves humanity wisely. We define state-based vulnerability as an extreme form of vulnerability that denies opportunities, harms, discriminates, marginalizes, and excludes individuals or groups because of the identities imposed by nation-state systems.
This research constructs a serving humanity paradigm for transforming state-based vulnerability into citizen well-becoming. Second, it proposes a global citizen identity that is equitable and humane by respecting and serving the needs of every individual, regardless of their legal status, national citizenship, social circumstances, vulnerability experiences, or identity. Third, by exploring state-based vulnerabilities, such as statelessness, this research contributes to understanding vulnerability experiences. Fourth, the levers and cranes of the serving humanity paradigm seek to wisely elevate human identity and liberate their capabilities to pursue their well-becoming by: 1. Including heterogeneous identities of humanity; 2. Protecting individual citizens and human societies; 3. Enabling global citizen identities; 4. Adopting a just, mutualistic, and human-centered mindset; 5. Empowering human agency, respecting dignity, and honoring diversity; and 6. Recognizing the inherent strengths and capabilities of individual citizens experiencing vulnerability.
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