Title: Improving service quality and productivity: exploring the digital connections scaling model

Authors: Cheng Hsu, James C. Spohrer

Addresses: Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA. ' Service Research, IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120-6099, USA

Abstract: The basic model argues that Digital Connections Scaling (DCS) of customers, providers and/or resources is a fundamental way to reduce service cycle time and transaction cost, and thereby to improve service quality and productivity. Digitisation makes entities connectable, and scaling decreases the marginal cost for the customer and the provider to cocreate new values. Three types of economies of DCS are postulated: the accumulation effect, the networking effect and the ecosystem effect on facilitating value propositions and cocreation. The paper also presents enterprise engineering principles, new micro-economic production functions, and an extended cyber-infrastructure model to substantriate DCS.

Keywords: service science; service quality; productivity; digital connections; enterprise engineering; cyber-infrastructure; production function; scaling; extended enterprises; service cycle times; transaction costs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2009.024093

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2009 Vol.11 No.3, pp.272 - 292

Published online: 25 Mar 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article