Three Frameworks for Service Research: Exploring Multilevel Governance in Nested, Networked Systems

Three frameworks are recommended to analyze multilevel governance across a spectrum of complex human systems, including nations, states, cities, universities, hospitals, hotels, and homes, with which service researchers are concerned. This spectrum of complex human systems can be seen as instances of <i>nested, networked holistic service systems</i> that provision <i>whole service</i> to the people inside them and depend heavily on shared systems of rules to change over time. Increasingly, service researchers benefit from improved analysis/design frameworks for complex human systems that (1) improve multilevel governance, making it more likely that local optimizations contribute to global resilience and sustainability, and (2) can integrate across diverse disciplines, systems, and cultures. Three frameworks are considered: service science, management, engineering, and design (SSME+D); viable systems approach (VSA); and institutional analysis and development (IAD). Each framework has a focal building block (rule-rich entity architectures)--namely, a service system (SSME+D), a viable system (VSA), and a polycentric system (IAD). Our goals are to (1) provide a conceptual foundation and recommended methodology to illustrate the type of future empirical work that might someday provide more efficient and effective ways to compare, contrast, and search for improved service research frameworks and entity architectures, and (2) encourage service researchers to move beyond dyads, be they provider-to-customer, business-to-business, or even government-to-citizen, and toward a view of multilevel rule-rich nested, networked systems in the wild.