Tuesday, June 3, 2025, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM at Roma Tre University, Department of Business study, Via Silvio D’amico 77, Rome
Organized by:
Mahesh Subramony (Northern Illinois University), Maria Golubovskaya (Griffith University), Ilias Danatzis (King’s College, London), David Solnet (University of Queensland), Helena Nguyen (University of Sydney).
Background
Rapid technological advances such as digitalization, automation, service robots, and artificial intelligence are radically transforming the way organizations interact with their customers. This shift raises critical questions about the future of service work where ‘high tech’ not only often supersedes ‘high touch’ but often threatens to replace it. Simultaneously, many frontline workers today occupy low-status, precarious, and stressful roles, facing significant subsistence pressures. This “perfect storm” of technological and socioeconomic forces is transforming frontline service work in unprecedented ways.
WeServe [Work and Employees in Service] is an emerging group of service scholars and practitioners who recognize the importance of humanity on the frontlines and study the implications of rapid technological and socioeconomic changes for frontline employees (FLEs), customers, organizations, and service ecosystems. The WeServe community attends to a wide range of topics, including service-related human resource practices, service leadership, human- technology collaboration, emotional regulations/labor, customer incivility/citizenship, and underprivileged/marginalized service work.
.
Objectives
The four-hour workshop feature a mix of plenary and breakout sessions.
- To foster connections and encourage collaborations between scholars interested in conducting research related to work and employees in service.
- To match emerging and established scholars using mentor-protégé development circles (Approximately 20 emerging scholars and 10 established scholars for a ratio of 1 mentor per 2 protégés).
- To develop innovative research projects that require interdisciplinary and cross-national collaborations.
Participation
- Emerging service scholars with accepted papers in the QUIS main program will be encouraged to send a short bio and application of interest in participating in the QUIS preconference to Mahesh Subramony (msubramony@niu.edu). In their application, the scholars will briefly describe an ongoing project where they require development/mentoring (150-200 words).
- Applicants will be contacted to confirm participation, and matched with an established scholar whose interests are in that domain.
- During the QUIS preconference, the mentors and protégés will be matched and provided sufficient time to engage in developing the research project.
The program of the preconference will follow shortly
| Agenda Topics | Time | |
| Welcome: Purpose and Introductions | 9.00 AM – 9.15 AM | |
| Why Humanity Matters in the Technological Age (Scholar Panel) | 9.15 AM- 10.15 AM | |
| Service researchers addressing real world service work challenges | 10.15 AM – 10.45 AM | |
| Research Collaboration Breakouts | 10.45 AM- 12.00 PM | |
| Report Outs | 12.00 AM – 12.30 PM | |