About Society for Serviceology
Mission
Services are not merely key economic activities, but also major factors that improve our quality of life, make local communities prosperous, and then provide a foundation for solving global issues. In an increasingly globalized market, it is necessary to increase the economic value of products and services, as well as to enrich their value (life value) for every individual citizen using the services. In addition, in order to bring solutions to global challenges, such as energy and environmental issues, and to generate social values, it is necessary to design a system that facilitates co-creative consensus-building efforts among the stakeholders of the services sector.
Traditionally, service-related research has developed in individual fields such as management, marketing, information engineering, and design engineering. However, to provide better services to our society, it is critical that social sciences, human sciences, and engineering sciences work together, as well as establish a strong partnership between industry and academia. There, we need to create an academic understanding of the activities that relate to social and economic services, which means it is necessary to establish an understanding of the comprehensive services that include not only the narrowly-defined services industry, but also the development of services by manufacturers. Moreover, it is necessary to develop a framework to co-create high customer satisfaction in alliance with customers.
Services are being developed globally while being profoundly affected by the cultures and social backgrounds of the countries in which they are delivered. Now, the Society for Serviceology (SfS) has begun in Japan, but it is expected to be developed globally. Thus, it pursues to be open to the world while respecting each country’s culture.
SfS aims to contribute to efforts concerning various industrial issues by organizing the vast knowledge of services, and to establish “academics for the society” relating to services. With this goal, the Society was named “service-ology,” meaning the study of services, and it will lead the efforts to develop a community in which researchers from various areas such as social sciences, human sciences, and engineering sciences can communicate, respect each other, and improve through friendly competition.
1st October, 2012
Co-founder of the Society for Serviceology
Tamio ARAI, Shibaura Institute of Technology
Motoshige ITOH, University of Tokyo
Masaaki MOCHIMARU, AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology)
Hajime ASAMA, University of Tokyo
Naoyuki AKIKUSA, Principal Member of SPRING (Service Productivity & Innovation for Growth）