Purpose This paper aims to investigate women’s financial inclusion as a critical element for the competitiveness of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market for entrepreneurship and sustainable development of the region, as MENA financial institutions’ loans to women-owned SMEs tend to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight how systems thinking contributes to decision making in uncertain contexts that are characteristic of service systems. Based on the assumption that service systems face complex conditions, the paper posits that systems thinking may support the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to create awareness on the need for lifting up the level of analysis in service research by focusing on systems, networks, and ecosystems to contribute to the research expansion of the traditionally narrow view of service. Design/methodology/approach –...

Purpose Poverty, hunger, inequalities, diseases, unsustainable use of resources, etc., in spite of scientific progress, still remains unsolved worldwide issues. All these issues relate to the challenges of sustainability and sustainable development that now call for urgent answers. The purpose...

The aim of this paper is to propose a systems interpretation of the concept of complexity and its implications for a theoretical discussion of the concept of boundary in complex service systems. The proposal highlights the interpretative contribution of a dual perspective of observation that...

The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the new opportunities that the <i>Viable Systems Approach (VSA)</i> can provide for observing complex service systems and explaining social phenomena through general schemes of interpretation. At the same time, it explores methodological links with the...</i>

The aim of this contribution is to discuss the evolution of marketing, arguing whether it is accomplishing a paradigm change. Starting from previous definitions of paradigm, we adopt the viable systems approach (<i><sc>v</sc>S<sc>a</sc></i>) as a general interpretation key useful for interpreting the evolution of...

In a fast-changing environment, organizations face conditions of growing complexity that challenge decision-making and innovation activities, highlighting an increasing need to develop dynamic capabilities. In this scenario, our focus is on service science's recent call for "T-shaped...

Purpose: Technology is revolutionizing the management logic of service systems. The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, is challenging interaction between humans and machines changing the service systems’ value co-creation configurations and logic. To envision...