BRIDGING BETWEEN GOODS ANDSERVICES SCM:Some Fresh Perspectives

Today it is widely recognized that service operations research lags behind its manufacturingcounterpart (Heineke and Davis, 2006; Ellram, Tate and Billington, 2007; Metters andMarucheck, 2007). As Chase (2004) poignantly noted, “80% of the United States’ economyis in services, but 80% of operations management is still focused heavily on manufacturing.”A related concern to the scanty attention paid to services in academic research is that thetheoretical foundations and paradigms in service research have all come from the marketingdiscipline, and operations paradigms are under-represented (Sampson, 2007). Set against thisbackdrop, this paper focuses on an even less attended subset of service research: servicessupply chain. A supply chain perspective on service operations is an opportunity to buildupon existing knowledge, and meets the needs of a topic fast gaining momentum.[...]