December 23, 2006: What Business Schools SHOULD Teach about Service Science

During this week's escape to Death Valley (where even a dial-up connection to the Internet is not very reliable), I took along my used copy of Decision Support Systems: An Organizational Perspective, by Peter G. W. Keen and Michael S. Scott Morton. The more I looked into this "time capsule" from the mid-seventies, the more I realized that the service science evangelists were doing themselves a great disservice by ignoring it. The authors even go so far as to say that decision support technology should not be viewed as a product that a technical team installs and then goes on to the next client. Instead, the team has a service obligation to the client to familiarize the client with the technology, bring the client up to speed on how that technology may best be used, and even update the technology to accommodate newly discovered client needs. Could it be that we knew more about service 30 years ago than we do today (and may I be contentious enough to suggest that we owe our "acquired ignorance" to the social beings we have become by virtue [sic] of the Internet)?

One passage in the final chapter of this book has stuck with me with regard to all the quibbling over creating an "academic discipline of service science." It is in a paragraph in which the authors discuss how those managers who are most likely to benefit from decision support technology should learn about that technology:

The best education for them is the building of a relationship with an effective DSS developer and, most importantly--the insistence on being committed and involved in the design an implementation process. A skilled manager who has flexibility of mind can and almost certainly should play a major role in the design of any DSS that she or he sponsors.

In other words what counts most on the managerial side is that "flexibility of mind" that will support a rich and profitable engagement with the developers trying to bring a new technology into play. This is as true today as it was thirty years ago. You would think we would know this by now; but, as the cliche keeps saying, "The Internet changes everything." Perhaps that crack about "acquired ignorance" has more to it than fiesty contentiousness!