Productivity in Service Systems: Towards a Managerial Framework

This article addresses a relevant question arising in <i>knowledge-intensive industries: modelling productivity</i>; an important issue of increasing importance in developed economies, (Drucker [Drucker, P. 1999. Knowledge-worker productivity: the biggest challenge. <i>California Management Review</i>.], Neely [Neely, A. 2002. <i>Business Peformance Measurement: Theory and Practice</i>. Cambridge University Press.], Ramirez [Ramirez, et al. 2004. Measuring knowledge worker productivity. <i>Journal of Intellectual Capital</i>.]). According to the findings presented in this paper, <i>service science</i> and related <i>service dominant logic</i> paradigm, is a useful framework upon which to understand and further operationalize productivity in <i>complex servicings</i>. The research approach adopted combines relevant theory in service science and productivity analysis with a real experience as practiced by a worldwide leading healthcare agency to test the validity of the concepts proposed. [<i>Service Science</i>, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]