Title: Towards a common framework for knowledge co-creation: opportunities for collaboration between Service Science and Sustainability Science Track: Viable Systems Approach
Authors Golinelli Gaetano M. Emeritus Professor of Business Management - Department of Management - Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy
[email protected] Sergio Barile Full Professor of Business Management - Department of Management - Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy
[email protected] Marialuisa Saviano (corresponding author) Associate Professor of Business Management - Department of Management & Information Technology - University of Salerno, Italy
[email protected] Francesca Farioli CIRPS- Interuniversity Research Centre for Sustainable Development Director, Italian Association for Sustainability Science (IASS), Italy
[email protected] Masaru Yarime Graduate School of Public Policy (GraSPP), University of Tokyo, Japan, and the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), University College London, United Kingdom
[email protected]
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Towards a common framework for knowledge co-creation: opportunities for collaboration between Service Science and Sustainability Science ABSTRACT Purpose - Sustainability and Sustainable Development should be the top priorities of a Smarter Planet. On the basis of this statement, our aim is to highlight opportunities of knowledge co-creation that derive from the integration of the research efforts of two communities of scientists, scholars and professionals, recognized worldwide that share a common vision of a smarter and more sustainable planet: Service Science and Sustainability Science. Design/Methodology/approach - By adopting a systems thinking view, and specifically the Viable Systems Approach (VSA), the paper analyses the scientific positioning of Service Science and Sustainability Science, and, through a Service-Dominant Logic co-creation approach, seeks commonalities that can highlight opportunities of fruitful scientific collaboration. Findings - The paper evidences significant convergence in the views and scientific positioning of Service Science and Sustainability Science, clarifying why the two communities should collaborate by integrating knowledge resources and sharing advances. By promoting a boundary crossing interaction and creating interface connections within and between the two scientific communities, gaps can be removed and relevant bridging elements explored and exploited in a shared effort targeted to realizing a smarter and more sustainable world. The common inter- and transdisciplinary as well as solution-oriented research approach appears a key methodological element of convergence for developing a shared framework of reference coherently. A “3Pillars”Knowledge Co-creation Framework for Service & Sustainability Science integrates the findings of our 3-step interpretative pathway, into a consistent whole, a key to creating convergence in multidisciplinary knowledge co-creation contexts. This framework proposes an original vision of sustainability which integrates the Triple Helix and the Triple Bottom Line models into a co-creation framework to support knowledge design and creation processes through which University-Industry-Government collaboration, necessary to address the challenge of a smarter and sustainable world, can be tried, tested and further developed. Research implications - The paper opens up new research pathways launching a Science-led call for collaboration that overcomes the traditional divide between knowledge domains and communities fostering a shared effort to address the challenges of sustainability within a smarter planet and to put into practice interdisciplinary collaboration in order to develop a common framework for Service and Sustainability Sciences. Practical implications - The paper provides insights for rethinking research, development and management approaches as well as education programs by placing sustainability at the center of the scientific, governmental and business agendas. It also sheds light on the criticalities and barriers of mutual learning systems. Originality/value - The paper develops an original analytical approach that integrates the Triple Helix and the Triple Bottom Line models into a coherent co-creation framework for sustainability in which Service Science and Sustainability Science play key roles by integrating their knowledge resources. Keywords - Service Science, Sustainability Science, Viable Systems Approach, Service-Dominant logic, Knowledge Co-creation. Paper type – Conceptual paper
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1. Introduction Sustainability and Sustainable Development are becoming increasingly relevant in the global agenda of governments as well as businesses and civil society. They should be among the top priorities of what we would consider a really Smarter Planet. Two emerging research streams are targeted to the challenge of developing inter- and transdisciplinary bodies of knowledge which could contribute to the improvement of life conditions of individuals and organizations: the focus of the first is on making our planet smarter; the other on making it more sustainable. The research questions we posit are: Is there a relationship between smartness and sustainability? Is a smarter planet also more sustainable? On the basis of these questions, by adopting a systems thinking view and a co-creation logic, our paper investigates the basic elements of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of Service Science, on the one hand, and Sustainability Science, on the other, seeking commonalities that can highlight prospects of fruitful scientific collaboration. Accordingly, the aim of this exploration is to identify opportunities of knowledge co-creation which can derive from the integration of the research efforts of these two worldwide recognized communities of scientists, scholars and professionals sharing a common vision of a smarter and more sustainable planet. Both Service Science and Sustainability Science communities call for scientific collaboration among scholars as well as practitioners. We believe that by identifying and making apparent the potential convergence between the two research fields, it will be possible to bridge the current divide. Such bridging elements could be integrated to develop a common framework to support knowledge co-design and co-creation processes through which University-Industry-Government collaboration, necessary to address the challenge of a smarter and sustainable world, can be tried, tested and further developed. This paper is the fruit of collaboration between scholars and researchers with varying disciplinary backgrounds, all sharing the vision of a more sustainable world. Following the discussion emerging at the Session “Co-design and Co-creation of Knowledge for Sustainability”, organized by the Italian Association for Sustainability Science (IASS) during the International Conference of Sustainability Science (ICSS), held in January 2015 at the University of United Nations (UNU) in Tokyo (http://sussci.org/events/), the team decided to work together to launch a Science-led call for collaboration among scientists as well as practitioners and educators to contribute towards overcoming the traditional divide between knowledge domains and communities and to foster a shared effort for addressing the challenges of sustainability and a smarter planet. Our interpretative methodology builds upon common roots in systems thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1968). Systems thinking and, specifically, the Viable Systems Approach (VSA) are implicitly adopted as meta-level frameworks that provide general interpretation schemes used to abstract general principles and concepts from the investigated disciplinary domains so as to bridge them. On this methodological basis, we apply the approach of the Service Dominant-logic (SDL) to achieve resource integration and collaboration in the context of knowledge creation for sustainability. The paper is organized as follows: first the views and the scientific positioning of Service Science and Sustainability Science are presented; then, commonalities and convergences between the two are identified by adopting a systems thinking approach to overcome current distances; subsequently, an integrated framework is developed to foster knowledge resources integration and co-creation between the two scientific communities in a shared effort to promote sustainability and sustainable development; finally, the main practical and research implications are briefly outlined.
2. The scientific positioning of Service Science and Sustainability Science In the following sections, we outline the views and positioning of the two scientific proposals under investigation with the aim of identifying potential commonalities to create the basis for a synergistic effort to promote the transition towards sustainability. 3
2.1 The Scientific positioning of Service Science Service Science or Service Science, Management, and Engineering was introduced by IBM to describe an interdisciplinary approach to the study, design, and implementation of services systems. Services systems are complex socio-technical systems in which people and technologies, on the basis of shared information, provide value for others. The study of services systems is an integrative, multidisciplinary undertaking and Service Science scientists and practitioners believe that many disciplines have knowledge and methods to contribute (Spohrer et al., 2007: 22). Service Science “combines organization and human understanding with business and technological understanding to categorize and explain the many types of service systems that exist as well as how service systems interact and evolve to co-create value” (Maglio & Spohrer, 2008a: 13). Thus, Service Science aims to “combine multiple disciplines to form a new specialty that increases our understanding of value co-creation in sociotechnical systems” (Spohrer & Maglio, 2008: 244). With this aim in mind, Service Science is a call for academia, industry, and governments to integrate their efforts to produce systematic innovation, but also an academic discipline as well as a research area. The expected outcome of this call is the development of an interdisciplinary body of knowledge, which should allow the study and management of service as “a system of interacting parts that include people, technology, and business” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_science,_management_and_engineering). Relevant disciplines range from computer science, cognitive science, economics, organizational behavior, human resources management, marketing, operations research, and others. The ultimate purpose is to integrate them into a coherent whole through the building of a science. The way Service Science prospects itself as a ‘science’, however, is different from any other basic science, like physics; it is more an attempt to bring together diverse disciplines that are involved in the study of service systems so that they can develop synergies, share knowledge and aims, and recover a unitary view of investigated and managed phenomena the understanding of which requires the overcoming of current boundaries that divide disciplines. The call, in fact, is specifically based on the need for an effective “understanding of complex human-centered service systems” which “requires a new approach that combines multiple methods, drawing from industrial engineering and operations research, social and behavioral sciences, information systems, and computer science and computational modeling.” (Maglio el al, 2015: 4). The need of a Service Science is essentially attributed to the growing relevance of the service sector which has become a large part of the economy and requires appropriate management models as “services aren’t nearly as efficient as manufacturing at this point in their evolution, so as services grow and manufacturing declines, the productivity and vitality of a nation, and even the world economy, can be threatened.” (http://www03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/servicescience/) Service, however, is not simply a sectorial phenomenon. It is increasingly recognized by scholars within and outside Service Science as the core of any value proposition, i.e., the real basis of market exchange. This is actually the view promoted by Service-Dominant logic (SDL) (Lusch & Vargo, 2004; Vargo & Lusch, 2006, 2008; Lusch, Vargo, O’Brien, 2007) and shared by scholars from both Service Science and Network & Systems Theory (Gummesson, 2002, 2008; Maglio, Bailey, Gruhl, 2007; Maglio & Spohrer, 2008; Spohrer & Maglio, 2008; Barile & Polese, 2010). The adoption of an SDL leads to see Service Science as “concerned with the evolution, interaction, and reciprocal cocreation of value among service systems – dynamic configurations of resources capable of providing benefit to other service systems (Maglio and Spohrer 2008; Maglio et al., 2009; Spohrer et al., 2008; Barile & Saviano, 2014; Saviano et al., 2014) and themselves” (Vargo & Akaka, 2009: 32). Sharing this wider view, we are convinced that the potential relevance of a ‘service science’ can have even more significant results than currently appears. One of the leading scientific journal of reference for the Service Science community of scholars and practitioners is Service Science, an Informs journal which, recognizing that “modern businesses rely on technology, communication, information, automation, and globalization” and “operate in a 4
complex web of suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders, creating value by sharing skills and capabilities with others for mutual benefit”, presents Service Science as “the emerging study of such complex service systems. It involves methods and theories from a range of disciplines, including operations, industrial engineering, marketing, computer science, psychology, information systems, design, and more.” (http://pubsonline.informs.org/journal/serv). It is this complexity of service systems that calls, then, for a systems theory orientation necessary to deal with the fact that “service systems are evolutionary, complex adaptive systems with emergent properties (e.g., value creation)” (Maglio et al., 2009: 405). Accordingly, Service Science “seeks to tackle the core problems of innovation in the 21st Century, including how to restructure organizations, how to manage technological innovation, and how to simulate systems with complex behaviors” (Abe, 2005: 17). Effective understanding of complex service systems requires combining multiple methods to consider how interactions between people, technology, organizations, and information create value under various conditions especially when they involve critical economic, social and environmental processes. 2.2 The scientific positioning of Sustainability Science Sustainability science emerged about a decade ago as an interdisciplinary and innovative field of inquiry attempting to conduct solution-oriented research that links knowledge to action in order to address the challenges posed by global change and its associated socio-economic impacts (Manifesto of IASS retrievable at www.scienzasostenibilita.org). Global change challenges, also described in literature as ’wicked problems’, referring to problems that are life-threatening and urgent, have long-term impacts, are highly complex (systemic), and are difficult or impossible to resolve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993; Dovers, 1996; Frame, 2008; Brown, Harris, Russell, 2010). Addressing them, therefore, requires new research paradigms able to reflect complexity, to encompass different magnitude of scales, multiple balance (dynamics) , interests (actors). These new paradigms can be found in “post-normal” and “Mode 2” genres, both embraced by Sustainability Science the aim being to provide a response to the crisis of “normal sciences” in addressing contemporary challenges. In “Mode 2” Science – academic and social, trans and interdisciplinary, participative, uncertain and exploratory – (Gibbons, 1994; Martens, 2006), scientists are part of a heterogeneous network. Their scientific tasks are components of an extensive process of knowledge production and they are also responsible for more than merely scientific production. In “post-normal science” (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993) elements such as uncertainty, value loading and a plurality of legitimate perspectives are considered as integral to science, and a new task for Science is required, that of quality assurance of the knowledge production and decision-making process. This entails organizing effective and adequately managed participatory processes in which different types of knowledge (not only scientific) come into play (horizontal knowledge production), involving the whole set of perspectives in the problem framing as well as in the decision making and implementation process. In fact, as claimed by Funtowicz and Ravets (1993) most of complex science-related policy problems have more than one plausible answer, and many have no well-defined scientific answer at all. Sustainability science is being developed in a constructive tension between a descriptive–analytical and a transformational mode (Kates et al., 2001; Turner, 2003; Clark & Dickson, 2003; Komiyama & Takeuchi, 2006; Wiek et al., 2012). In the first, the focus is on the enhancement of understanding of problems derived from complex human-nature dynamics, whereas in the transformational mode, “scientists engage with a broad range of stakeholders from other domains of society, not only to improve the collective understanding of coupled systems, but also to develop joint and coordinated strategies for how to solve sustainability problems” (Wiek et al., 2012). In Wiek et al. (2012), on the basis of a comparative appraisal of empirical sustainability science projects, Authors highlight that in order to fulfill its transformational function, the process – i.e.. credibility, saliency, legitimacy, (Cash et al., 2003) – and impact – transferability, scalability, outreach 5
– of the solution options has to be improved through the “implementation of strong collaborative research processes in which scientists and stakeholders interact starting from problem framing to strategy implementation and problem transformation” (Wiek et al., 2012: 22) . This implies the adoption of transdisciplinarity as a “reflexive, integrative, method-driven scientific principle aiming at the solution or transition of societal problems and concurrently of related scientific problems by differentiating and integrating knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge” (Lang et al., 2012). Transdisciplinary research requires a strong link with the specific social/local/place context and institutional setting from where sustainability problems originate. This is expressed in the inclusion of public and civic values and common goods perceptions along an iterative circular co-production process, linking scientific and experiential knowledge, enabling mutual learning amongst researchers from different disciplines as well as from actors outside academia, promoting societal learning, transformation and reflexivity (Lang et al., 2012; Sala, Farioli, Zamagni, 2013; Marsden & Farioli, 2015) Quoting Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom “ We cannot act in isolation, collective participatory action at multiple scale is needed to implement the change”(http://aidontheedge.info/2012/08/16/conversations-on-complexity-a-tribute-to-elinor-ostrom/). Many networking experiences have emerged across the world, at global, national and interfaculty level, such as the European Sustainability Science Group, Future Earth Partnership, the Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science hosted by University of Tokyo, the International Society for Sustainability Science (ISSS), which every year organizes the International Conference on Sustainability Science, and the Italian Association for Sustainability Science, its Italian counterpart. Several peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journals have emerged and multiplied including Sustainability Science (the journal of the ISSS), Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy; Current Opinion in environmental Sustainability, Challenges in Sustainability and the section devoted to sustainability science in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The parallel growth of collaborative networks across different geographical locations and contributing disciplines and that of interdisciplinary journals show an important step towards the consolidation of sustainability science as a unifying field of investigation and research community (Bettencourt & Kaur 2011; Sala, Farioli, Zamagni, 2013). A further step in the consolidation of the field requires addressing the theory using an empirical bottom-up approach, so as to improve the practice and outcome of Sustainability Science. For that purpose, networks of long-term integrated demonstration projects need to be collected, evaluated, monitored and disseminated in order to demonstrate achievements and challenges in co-creating and implementing knowledge, in order to encourage experimentation with different approaches for analyzing and building the capacity of regions to deal with environmental change and achieve sustainability (Wiek et al., 2012; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2014).
3. Seeking commonalities and potential convergence between Service Science and Sustainability Science 3.1 Sustainability in Service Science In its wider view, Service Science aims to find “new ways that service systems can improve our economic and social well-being sustainably” (IfM and IBM, 2008: 5)”. The word “sustainable”, which appears since the first presentations of Service Science, is recognized as “an increasingly urgent global concern”; subsequently, Service scientists believe that “businesses should take the opportunity of expanding the definition of stakeholder value to include new measures” (IfM & IBM, 2008: 14). In this respect, Service Science proposes a “triple-loop learning framework” that is based on evaluating return on investments of transformation efforts aimed at improvement, taking into account three dimensions (Spohrer et al., 2007: 15): 6
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Efficiency (Plans): Things are done in the right way (improved plans, methods, and techniques for a service system). Effectiveness (Goals): The right things get done (improved measures, goals, purpose, and key performance indicators for a service system). Sustainability (Relationships): The right relationships exist with other service systems (improved value proposition results, robustness and versatility with more old and new service systems) “so that diverse options for future value propositions are possible (dependent sustainability), as well as self-service is an option based on internal competences (independent sustainability).”
According to this framework, “efficiency concerns tend to push service systems towards over specialization, while sustainability concerns tend to push service systems towards diversification and general competences. Effectiveness concerns tend to push service systems towards value propositions with the highest returns and longest expected time horizon for high returns to continue, to lower expensive transformation cost run rates.” (Spohrer et al., 2007: 15) Thus, since its origins Service Science has attributed a great relevance to sustainability. In 2010, for example, the journal Service Science published a work by Wolfson et al. which was an explicit attempt to embed sustainability into the Service Science framework. Considering sustainability as “a measure of the capacity of a certain process or state in any system to balance the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, Authors recognized that “one of the main challenges of sustainability is that of translating theory into action in the form of operational service offerings”. This assumption was at the basis of the effort of Wolfson et al. to establish sustainability “as an essential aspect of services in service science”. In their proposal, sustainability is viewed “as a service in and of itself” and Authors believe that this view “will foster the design and development of comprehensive, future-oriented, flexible values, methods, and tools applicable to all design, development, management, and implementation processes.” (Wolfson et al., 2010: 216). The intriguing idea of a “S3-Sustainability and Services Science” led the Authors to develop a model of reference for integrating sustainability in Service Science. Interestingly, the aim was ambitious as focus was not so much on embedding sustainability into the management of service systems to make them more sustainable, but to consider sustainability itself as a service system within the framework of Service Science. In other works within Service Science, the focus is more on the sustainability of service systems (Tukker et al., 2008); sustainability that can be enhanced “by the amount of shared information available to all service systems in an ecology of service systems” (Spohrer et al., 2007: 16). In this vein, sustainable service systems are “based on an evolving adaptive process where a potential disruptive offer and its corresponding more sustainable demand emerges out of an iterative cocreation process in articulation with its ecosystems” (Sempels & Hoffman, 2011: 2). Coherently with this view, sustainability, as a research topic of Service Science, is included in the category “Service Quality, Excellence”, together with compliance and effectiveness (http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group.php?id=1230). At a more practical level, a recent initiative within the context of Service Science, denominated “Smart Cape Cod” launched in 2011, applies advanced technologies to help manage more efficiently and protect the region’s natural resource: “by systemically managing water and energy use, as well as carbon emissions, smart organizations realize true sustainability while achieving real business benefits—driving growth at the individual, organizational and population levels. Let’s work together to drive real progress in our world.” (http://www.capecodcommission.org/resources/GIS/ibm_ppt.pdf). Another relevant initiative, with a broader scope, has been launched by Service Science in recent years under the label “Smarter Planet”: a global agenda for fostering collaboration between business, government and civil society to explore and exploit “the potential of smarter systems to achieve economic growth, near-term efficiency, sustainable development and societal progress” (http://www03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/servicescience/). Based on a vision driven by three I’s—instrumentation, interconnectedness and intelligence it should help cities to deal more effectively 7
and efficiently with traffic congestion, energy use, the building of sustainable communities, healthcare services etc. for a smarter planet. Evidence of positive outcomes results in many countries. Examples range from improved operational efficiency, smarter transportation solutions, reduction of costs, etc. 3.2 Smart Systems innovation for Sustainability Sustainability concerns long-term constraints on various types of resources, including energy as one of the most critical issues at global level. The fundamental link between sustainability and energy has been recognized internationally by the UN General Assembly’s declaration of 2012 as the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All,” and also of 2014-2024 as the “UN Decade for Sustainable Energy for All”. Furthermore, the UN Secretary Generals Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative sets three specific goals for the year 2030 (The Secretary-General’s High-Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All, 2012): ensuring universal access to modern energy services; doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency; and doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. The recommendations on energy compiled from civil society consultations, including a teleconference-based consultation that resulted in the report Advancing Regional Recommendations on the Post-2015 Agenda, an online consultation on four post-2015 reports to the SecretaryGeneral, and a teleconference and meeting-based consultation on the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, as well as the Women’s Major Group energy recommendations for the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), made the following recommendations on energy (United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, 2013): achieving universal energy access; ensuring clean, safe, and locally appropriate energy generation; advancing energy efficiency; enabling effective financing for energy; and establishing the roles of stakeholders. OWG Co-Chairs’ Priority Areas document, which was released in February 2014, summarized the proposals submitted by various stakeholders for the objectives to be included in SDGs in the area of energy as follows: ensuring universal access to modern energy services; deployment of cleaner including low- or zero-emissions energy technologies; increasing the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, including providing policy space and necessary incentives for renewable energy; improving energy efficiency in buildings, industry, agriculture and transport; phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption; mobilizing finance to invest in modern energy infrastructure; sharing knowledge and experience on appropriate regulatory frameworks and enabling environments; promoting partnerships on sustainable energy; building capacity and transferring modern energy technologies. While the importance of promoting access, renewables, and efficiency needs to be emphasized in proposals on energy in the context of SDGs, the aspect of resilience also cannot be ignored in considering sustainable energy systems. Today we live in an environment that is continually faced with shocks, disturbances, and extreme events. A disturbance or shock to the delivery of energy can lead to major socio-economic and environmental consequences. Often, we are reminded of the destructive power that natural disasters provoke over the energy system of a region or nation. These include disasters associated with floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. The East Japan Great Earthquake in 2011, for example, caused significant disruptions on the energy system, with 4.4 million households left without electricity in the area directly hit by the earthquake and tsunami, but also in other regions quite distant from Tohoku. In response to these challenges, it is of critical importance that energy systems are equipped with and maintain a certain level of resilience. Possible options include increasing the redundancy and diversity of the components of a system, introducing modularity in the system, and promoting distributed and decentralized systems of producing, transmitting, and utilizing energy. Novel energy technologies, notably smart grids and associated technologies, have been rapidly developed and adopted in industrialized countries and increasingly in emerging countries. Identifying their characteristics, potentials, and challenges is required as well as incorporating the impacts these technologies would make in pursuing the sustainability of energy systems in the future across the 8
globe. In particular, it should be emphasized that these technologies and systems improve the resilience of energy systems, in addition to contributing to the three targets of securing access to energy for all, improving energy efficiency, and promoting renewable energies. Recharging large amounts of electric vehicles clustered in specific areas would require additional power supply and charging stations, which leads to incurring substantial costs. Hence a large diffusion of electric vehicles will require a major innovation on the electric grid so that its control and management can be carried out more efficiently. The main function of the smart grid is to optimize the electric grid by efficient use of information for measuring and controlling end-points, to enable optimization of energy production, transmission, storage and use. With smart equipment which allows upload as well as download of electricity, batteries can be used to store energy and serve as a reserve of power during the time electric vehicles are dormant. Used batteries can also divert their remaining power capacity to other uses such as backup stations, which implies extending their economic value beyond their life to power electric vehicles. Under vehicle-to-grid operations, batteries connected for recharging can also provide backup power for a number of purposes, including contingent load in the event of failure of a generating unit connected to the grid, frequency regulation for fine-tuning the necessary instantaneous balance between supply and demand on the grid, reactive power for providing local phase-angle corrections important in AC networks, and load-following reserves, which is particularly important to backup and absorb variations in power provided by renewables such as wind and solar energy. In the aftermath to the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese electricity sector faced a serious challenge of imminent supply shortage. The electrification of mobility offers off-peak demand, which is coupled with uncertainties on the extent of benefits and complexities of involving vehicle batteries in grid storage. As electric vehicles have started to be connected to electricity networks through the smart grid, this systemic innovation also requires active involvement of other relevant actors, such as utility providers, electric and electronic manufacturers, house building firms, and construction companies. Many of them have not been engaged in close collaboration with the automotive sector before and would have different interests and incentives, which may not necessarily be compatible with one another. A key challenge for the large scale deployment of electric vehicles will be how to implement effective integration of various types of knowledge and expertise possessed by these diverse stakeholders. The emergence of social experiments for establishing robust business models in many parts of Japan will provide valuable lessons and implications for corporate strategy, public policy, and institutional design in moving towards sustainability across the globe.
4. Towards an integrated framework linking Service and Sustainability Sciences In the previous sections, we outlined elements to illustrate the potential convergence between the scientific interests and approaches of the two communities, highlighting, in particular, how the sustainability concept currently appears in the Service Science framework and exemplifying how smart service systems can be conceived to contribute to sustainability. Thus, the scientific positioning of the Service Science and Sustainability Science communities as well as current initiatives and commitments pinpoint significant convergence between them, which can become reasons ‘why’ they should collaborate by integrating resources and sharing knowledge advances to contribute to realizing a smarter and more sustainable world (Barile & Saviano, 2014; Barile et al., 2014). If we agree on this view, the next step to reflect upon would be how they should collaborate. Accordingly, in the following sections, we focus on the why and the how of scientific and professional collaboration between Service Science and Sustainability Science, evidencing opportunities and criticalities.
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4.1 ‘Why’ Service and Sustainability Sciences should collaborate The visions and aims that have stimulated the founding of the two communities around specific scientific projects illustrate how they have both felt the need for a better understanding of reality through integrating disciplines that have traditionally progressed separately but are now beginning to show inadequateness in understanding the emerging dynamics of complex phenomena. There is, in fact, a growing awareness that each discipline as a single entity, although fundamental from a problem solving perspective, is not able autonomously to support more complex decision making but increasingly requires the cutcrossing of disciplines, sectors and systems for the phenomena to recover a unitary view of reality which is characterized by a unitary functioning. This is the main reason why a systems thinking approach is fundamental for research both within and in between many disciplines. This awareness has led scientists and practitioners from various scientific domains to seek collaboration with those endowed with different skills and expertise in order to integrate knowledge resources and to co-create the interdisciplinary and cross-sectional knowledge required to face the growing complexity of experienced phenomena. Such complexity does not characterize reality in itself but subjectively emerges from the incapability of the observer or decision maker to understand and govern the dynamics characterized by growing variety, variability and indeterminacy (Barile, 2009; Saviano & Caputo, 2013). This emphasizes the need for an adequate endowment with interdisciplinary knowledge. Thus, both communities are engaged in research on phenomena characterized by complexity the understanding of which requires going beyond the disciplinary distinctions by crossing boundaries between knowledge fields and recovering a unitary view of reality.. In particular, the two Communities have to deal with Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) (Folke et al., 2002; Rammel et al., 2007): - Sustainability Science is engaged in the study of Social-Ecological Systems (SESs) (Ostrom, 2009) where the focus is on human-nature coupled systems and environmental and social sciences are the main fields of interest; - Service Science is engaged in the study of Socio-Technical Systems (STSs) (Gorman, 2010) where the focus is on human-technology coupled systems and social (business) and engineering sciences are the main fields of interest. Both social-ecological systems and socio-technical systems are complex adaptive systems whose understanding requires an interdisciplinary approach. The most critical and challenging aspect to deal with is that interaction in such coupled systems consists only partly of linear deterministic relationships (relationships that can be designed and controlled) and partly of ‘non-linear’ relationships whose outcomes are generally unpredictable (Barile et al., 2012b, 2013). SESs and STSs are, in turn, interconnected within the entire functioning of reality. Thus, the two communities examine complex phenomena which not only are characterized by similar behaviors and dynamics, but are also reciprocally interconnected and, through interaction, produce the changes we observe in reality. There is then an apparent convergence between the interests, the problems to face, the requirements and approaches of the two sciences and their fields of interest, in what they are similar, seem to overlap and, in what they are different, seem to be complementary. The overlapping part is fundamental for allowing interaction, as similarity generates what the VSA calls “consonance”; the part, ‘not in common’ instead, is fundamental for synergistically creating (co-creating) the ‘new’. In actual fact, both communities have undergone a similar process, recognizing the need for a new integrated science capable of supporting the understanding of complex systems whose functioning always implies a form of interaction between society, economy and environment. The two communities have also similar conceptions of the kind of science they are trying to build: not a new discipline to add to the existing ones, but rather a new knowledge area deriving from the integration of various existing disciplines all directly or indirectly linked to society, the economy and the environment. In effect, both communities are engaged in knowledge co-creation and innovation processes which relate to growth and development. In the perspectives with which they currently 10
look at growth and development, however, some differences may appear. In particular, Service Science seems to look at growth and development from a business (as well as social) organizations’ perspective, as it mainly deals with businesses and society problems. Sustainability Science, instead, appears to look specifically at green growth and sustainable development, as it mainly deals with environmental problems. It should be said, moreover, that the Sustainability Science community would prefer to talk in terms of pathways to sustainability – linking environmental integrity with social justice instead of green growth. Thus, while Service Science takes a wider view of the socio-technical, economic processes, it also takes into account environmental problems, Sustainability Science focuses on promoting a transformative change in order to rebalance the disequilibrium that has long characterized the relationship between the economy, environment and society. The recent evolution of the economy, society and environment appears characterized by serious if not dramatic trends. Many of the environmental, social and economic disasters that take place derive from the evidence that the economy, society and environment are not effectively coevolving. More precisely, the environment and society appear to be ‘dominated’ by the rules of economic growth and logics. This condition over time, has led to an unbalanced configuration of the relationship between the economy, environment and society, which instead in an ideal state , have to be balanced as represented in Fig. 1 using the well known Triple Bottom Line model of sustainability (Elkington, 1997). Clearly the environmental dimension calls for a urgent change in the way the economy, in particular, approaches relations with the environment as well as with society. Fig. 1 – Ideal and real configurations of the Triple Bottom Line model and required change
Source: IUCN, 2006, p. 2
A change is required that derives from the necessity to halt an apparently unsustainable development process that is incapable of creating conditions of wellbeing for all present and future generations. Innovation should be targeted to this outcome. Both Service Science and Sustainability Science communities of scholars and practitioners are engaged in such innovation processes. The way each one looks at the problem, however, as highlighted above, is slightly different, because, despite a substantial overlapping of many of the scientific disciplines involved in their multidiscliplinary frameworks, their dominant perspectives remain, influenced by their different origins and focus. Having as a reference the Triple Bottom Line model, as highlighted previously and considering the kind of disciplines mostly involved in research and innovation in each of the two scientific domains, Sustainability Science appears to look prevalently at the environmental dimension and at its intersection with the social dimension, not disregarding the economic one. Service Science, instead, appears mostly concentrated on the economic and social dimensions, though not disregarding the 11
environmental factor. This is a key point: to be completely and effectively interdisciplinary with reference to phenomena of reality, they are first the two (meta) sciences that have to avoid being (in a recursive manner) excessively focused on one or more disciplines compared to others (that is what already characterizes the single disciplines!) Thus, what emerges in the light of what we have highlighted so far is that, although coming from perspectives with a different focus, an integration of Service and Sustainability Sciences would complete the framework for an interdisciplinary approach to the study and management of systems with an integrated Environmental-Social-Economic perspective. Accordingly, the first step of the construction of our framework is represented in Fig. 2 using the Triple Bottom Line model that shows the environment, economy and society contexts in which humans’ socio-economic processes take place, and highlights the different focus of the two sciences and their potential complementarity in the building of an integrated knowledge domain. Fig. 2 – Towards an integration of Service Science and Sustainability Science within the three pillars framework of sustainability
Society
Society
Environment
Economy
Environment
Economy
Society
Environment
Economy
Source: Barile and Saviano. www.asvsa.org
As suggested by the representation proposed, in an integrated framework, Service Science would contribute expertise especially in the study of business and socio-technical systems, while Sustainability Science would contribute expertise in the study of social-ecological systems. Together, the two scientific communities complement the knowledge necessary to address more successfully the challenge of sustainability and sustainable development. 4.2 ‘How’ Service and Sustainability Sciences can collaborate As highlighted, the growing need for a more adequate approach to the study, government and management of systems that involve integrated or interconnected environmental, social and economic processes, has led both communities to launch a call addressed to people with different knowledge backgrounds and skills from the various disciplinary and professional contexts engaged or interested in such processes. Currently, the two communities do not formally collaborate; nevertheless, many members from both coherently with the mission of their community, are variously involved in ‘beyond the boundary’ scientific and professional collaboration. 12
There are, however, still very few and scattered signals of explicit reciprocal interest. If we examine two of the main journals of reference for the two communities, i.e. the above quoted journals Service Science and Sustainability Science, we note that, apart from a few authors, a formal reciprocal interest in terms of knowledge fields does not appear. In fact, searching for articles that contain the words ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ in the titles or keywords or abstracts of Service Science, on the one hand, end ‘service’ or ‘service systems’ in Sustainability Science, on the other, only a few articles appear– 16 on 240 for Sustainability Science and 7 on 130 for Service Science that explicitly discuss topics respectively related to sustainability and service (see Table 1). These concepts and related topics are often used and discussed within the main body of the articles; however, our aim was to verify the number of cases where the topic was central or relevant for the authors to include them in the title or in the keywords, or at least in the abstract, where the most relevant concepts and terms for the paper commonly appear. Table 1 - Articles containing the words ‘service”/”services’ in the journal Sustainability Science (Issues: 2006- 2015) and “Sustainable”/”Sustainability” in the journal Service Science (Issues: 2009-2015) JOURNAL
ANALYZED ARTICLES
ARTICLES CONTAINING THE SEARCHED WORDS
IN TITLE
IN KEYWORDS
IN ABSTRACT
Sustainability Science
240
16
4
7
32
Service Science
136
7
4
5
17
Source: Adapted from http://www.springer.com/environment/environmental+management/journal/11625 http://pubsonline.informs.org/journal/serv
and
We should specify, however, that while the articles in Service Science which contain the words sustainable or sustainability (Christopher, 2010; Saviano, Bassano, Calabrese, 2010; Wolfson et al., 2011), effectively discuss topics related to these concepts, in the case of Sustainability Science the terms “service” and “services”, when used, generally refer to the concept of “ecosystems services” which differs from the notions of service and service systems used in Service Science. This clarification suggests another aspect relevant to our discussion, relative to the use of the term “ecosystem”. Clearly, in Sustainability Science, the term is used with its original meaning from natural sciences, where an ecosystem is defined as “a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem). Conversely, the term ecosystem used in Service Science refers to complex networks of interconnected systems with a social sciences view (Vargo & Akaka, 2009; Chan & Hsu, 2010; Basole & Karla, 2012). Specifically, the notion of “service ecosystem” is gaining attention within the service community defined as “a relatively self-contained, self-adjusting system of resource-integrating actors that are connected by shared institutional logics and mutual value creation through service exchange” (Lusch, Vargo, Tanniru, 2010: 24). Thus, although conceptually similar, as derived from the same general scheme, the lexicon, and language itself, express their full meanings only when they are contextualized within specific schemes (Barile, 2013). Nonetheless, this common although different use of terminology, such as in the case of ecosystems, makes explicit an underlying common general scheme. General schemes are fundamental bridging elements in multidisciplinary contexts (Barile et al., 2012a; Barile, Saviano & Simone, 2014). Another basic element of potential convergence between the two communities is relative to their common solution-oriented research approach that links knowledge to action. In fact, not only Service 13
Science, as can be expected considering its origins, has its focus on developing solutions, but also Sustainability Science, which ever since its start has remained a solution-oriented endeavor. The difference may be that Service Science has expertise and interest across many sectors, while the focus of Sustainability Science is on finding solutions to persistent real-world problems of sustainability – defined in paragraph 2.2. as ‘wicked problems’. Sharing the post-normal science paradigm, Sustainability Science focuses on aspects of problem solving that tend to be neglected in traditional accounts of scientific practice: uncertainty, value loading and a plurality of legitimate perspectives. Probably, many other elements of potential convergence would appear from a deeper look at the two communities’ frameworks, projects, initiatives, etc., sustaining our view of convergence; what we have highlighted, however, appears to us already useful to promote collaboration between them. We are strongly convinced, in fact, that collaboration, although more challenging to put into practice than in theory, would not only be fruitful but also relevant to progress knowledge. So, the problem moves on to the questions: How can Service and Sustainability scientific communities practically collaborate? On the basis of what framework of reference? What roles should they play in an integrated approach? All that we have highlighted so far suggests that the best pathway to promote collaboration between the two sciences is by following the trajectory already drawn by Service Science, which actually, from the very beginning of its engagement in the call for a science of service systems, included the sustainability view. Now we should consider more specific aspects that emerge, from a more indepth analysis of a -
‘system’ view of sustainability;
-
‘service science’ view of sustainability as a service system; a ‘social sciences’ view of sustainability as a bridging paradigm.
Accordingly, we now undertake an ulterior three step pathway in which the contributions of diverse authors and perspectives from the team are proposed. 4.2.1 A ‘system’ view of sustainability as a balance between efficiency and resilience The sustainability of a system can be regarded as a balance between efficiency and resilience (Goerner, Lietaer, Ulanowicz, 2009; Lietaer, Ulanowicz, Goerner, 2009; Ulanowicz et al., 2009). Efficiency is defined as the network’s capacity to perform in a sufficiently organized and efficient manner as to maintain its integrity over time. Resilience is considered to be the network’s reserve of flexible fallback positions and diversity of actions that can be used to meet the exigencies of novel disturbances and the novelty needed for on-going development and evolution. Understanding the tradeoffs between efficiency and resilience for sustainability would help us in our governance of natural resources towards a more appropriate balance. To design energy systems, we also need to understand the dynamic mechanisms of positive feedback growth which can erode systemic sustainability (Goerner, Lietaer, Ulanowicz, 2009). A number of natural as well as social processes tend to show such dynamics to accelerate its own efficiency and growth in a way that actively drains the broader system (Ulanowicz, 1995). These processes include: selection, a natural tendency to augment elements that increase flow through the epicenter circuit and to eliminate elements which do not; increasing efficiency honed by this selection and elimination; self-amplifying growth created by increasing efficiency, influx and pull; erosion of the surrounding network caused by the massive draw of resources into the epicenter hub; brittleness caused by the elimination of backup resilience; and rigidity caused by increasing constraints on options and behavior. There are many examples in which this dynamics of positive feedback can be demonstrated to function in the natural environment (Goerner, Lietaer, Ulanowicz, 2009). The massive algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico today shows what happens when unchecked growth in one circuit creates a resource concentrating vortex that actively erodes the broader network upon which systemic health ultimately depends. Fertilizer and agricultural wastes flowing down the Mississippi River triggered massive algae growth that has depleted nearly all the oxygen in water, which caused an equally massive die-off of marine life, notably fish, shrimp and shellfish. 14
Rather than a static conception, the sustainability of a system requires that the system is durable and stable for generations with a sufficient capacity of resilience. Recent thinking in the field of sustainability science about change, disturbance, uncertainty, and adaptability is fundamental to the governance of systems to reorganize and recover from change and disturbance without their collapse, in other words, systems that are “safe to fail” (Ahern, 2011). Strategies for building resilience capacity would include multi-functionality, redundancy and modularization, bio and social diversity, multi-scale networks and connectivity, and adaptive planning and design. In the context of establishing governance for sustainability, earth system governance is understood as “the sum of the formal and informal rule systems and actor-networks at all levels of human society that are set in order to influence the co-evolution of human and natural systems in a way that secures the sustainable development of human society” (Biermann, 2007). Governance for sustainability thus can be defined as formal and informal networks with interactions among actors, and systems composing them, that influence sustainability by integrating various dimensions (Shiroyama et al., 2012). Then governance for sustainability requires knowledge integration as a means to deal with multiple dimensions of sustainability and uncertainty (Yarime et al., 2012). Multi-actor governance involves public-private and multi-level interactions, which are needed to obtain agreement on sustainable actions among actors for designing and establishing resilient systems. 4.2.2 A ‘Service Science’ view of sustainability as a service system The reference here is to the previously quoted work of Wolfson et al. “S 3-Sustainability and Services Science” published in the journal Service Science (2010). The view of sustainability as a service system proposed by the Authors, substantially interprets the contribution of Service Science in the design of a service system targeted to achieve sustainability as a value. The interpretative proposal basically affirms that “because the actions of today help determine how future generations of a service will be designed, tackling the difficult task of defining the constituent elements of sustainability from the outset forces a future-oriented approach during the entire process of analysis and development. Thus, the general claim can be made that every person involved in service-related actions or processes in the present inevitably influences the future, and therefore the needs, of the next generation. In other words, the present generation comprises the service providers in sustainability while the customers constitute the next generation” (Wolfson et al., 2010: 219) (Fig. 3). The Authors also state that “as a service system, sustainability should be based on a broad and intelligent database that will comprise environment, financial, and social resources and measurements [...]. The accumulated database, together with predictions about future changes and relevant restrictions, are to be integrated into the sustainability values, which will represent the full sustainability image” (Wolfson et al., 2010: 220). Fig. 3 - S3 Sustainability as a Service Science Model
Source: Wolfson et al., 2010: 219.
15
In our view, the problem of ‘how’ is not only a matter of reflecting upon the design of the system to implement targeted to sustainability (which is actually in a typical service scientist’s perspective). Our question is at a meta level regarding how the two sciences can converge towards a common framework, as proposed in Fig. 2 and as assumed in Fig. 3 when including the Triple Bottom Line model in the chart Substantially, we are moving towards a key question relative to what is assumed every time the Triple Bottom Line model (Elkington, 1997) is used to represent the three pillars of sustainability: How does interaction between the three spheres actually occur? What determines its dynamic? Who directs it? By leveraging upon the inclusion of the social sciences perspective in both the Service Science and the Sustainability Sciences frameworks, and the subsequent evidence of the transversality of this body of disciplines to any field of knowledge that deals with humans and social processes, we believe that this common perspective can offer useful suggestions about the ‘how’ the two communities can collaborate. By taking the social sciences perspective, we believe it will be easier to bridge the economic and the environmental views. Moreover, the social sciences perspective introduces subjectivity in our discourse, suggesting we shift our focus from the objective fields of scientific knowledge, to the subjective view of the actors involved in the proposed collaboration. considering the criticalities and leverages implied in implementing a multi-actor knowledge co-creation system. 4.2.3 A ‘Social Sciences’ view of sustainability as a bridging paradigm So far, we have discussed the disciplines, fields, domains, etc. of scientific as well as practical knowledge, reaching the conclusion that the integration of Sustainability Science and Service Science would lead to the co-creation of the body of knowledge necessary to deal with the challenges of a smarter and more sustainable world, i.e. knowledge capable of supporting a decision making and problem solving approach targeted to recovery from the currently unbalanced relationship between the economy, society and environment, as previously illustrated in Fig. 1. Shifting then from the objects of the knowledge co-creation process to the subjects of the same, i.e. the actors in this challenging process, we take a ‘social sciences’ view, whose interface role between Sustainability and Service Sciences’ views can enable the connecting of the environmental and the economic perspectives (see again Fig. 1). In this respect, within the VSA community, a research stream on sustainability is growing as a natural outreach of a systems thinking view of businesses and social organizations (as well as individuals) as viable systems; a view in which the concept of sustainability appears intrinsic to that of viability (Golinelli, 2010; Barile, Montella, Saviano, 2011; 2012; Barile, 2013). The systems view, in particular, allows the integrating of ‘parts’ into a coherent ‘whole’ also taking into account the subjective perspectives and views that characterize a multi-actor collaboration context (Barile & Saviano, 2013). Thus, on the basis of a collaboration with scholars and researchers from different fields and with the purpose of embedding sustainability in management studies (Golinelli & Volpe, 2012; Barile et al., 2014), a multi-disciplinary team has embraced a research pathway in collaboration with members from the Italian Association for Sustainability Science, arriving at the unexpected outcome of finding a potential key to link together the various perspectives even going beyond the management and social sciences field (Saviano, 2014a,b; 2015). All the great challenges of sustainability and sustainable development essentially imply dealing with change (Watzlawick, Weakland, Fisch, 1974), then with innovation (Shumpeter, 1939), then with knowledge creation (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995), The shift of focus on the actors of the transformative change towards sustainability, led this team to recognize that Science, hence Academia have to be key actors in the process. Considering also that a call for a functioning Science-Policy interface for sustainable development has been launched by the UN member States and recently reaffirmed at Rio+20 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 16
2014: 51) and that there is wide consensus on the key role of a Science-Industry collaboration to address effective innovation also through the “Third mission” of University (Ranga & Etzkowitz, 2013), it then appears that Science-Policy and Science-Industry on the one hand, and PolicyIndustry on the other, can represent critical linking elements in a possible framework of reference for moving forward along the pathway towards sustainability. Focus is, then, on three key actors of the research and development process for innovation: Government, Academia and Industry. In this respect, from a social perspective, it is worth noting also that Sustainability Science can play a relevant bridging role as a Science-Policy-Society interface. In fact, both the scientific and social paradigms are required in Sustainability Science that acts as a bridge between them as the social paradigm is the cradle of values and perspectives on sustainability and the scientific paradigm structures problem definitions and solutions (Sala, Farioli & Zamagni, 2013). The Sustainability Science domain is embedded within the wider domain of society and culture, including the political context, which underpins and informs the social paradigms. Secondly, Sustainability Science builds on scientific paradigms which define the scientific core of the discipline, characterized by its own ontology, epistemology and methodology. Below in Fig. 4 is represented the Conceptual framework for Sustainability Science as an interface between scientific and social paradigms for handling sustainable development challenges characterised by complex relationship between nature and humankind. The scheme has to be considered on a multi temporal and spatial scales (Sala, Farioli & Zamagni, 2013). Fig. 4 – Conceptual framework for Sustainability Science as interface between scientific and social paradigms
Source: Sala, Farioli & Zamagni, 2013
4.3 A “3Pillars” Knowledge co-creation framework for Service & Sustainability Science All the assumptions and considerations discussed in the previous section lead to consider the contribution of a model centered on innovation systems, which focuses on the role/roles each actor involved in the process should play. The reference is to the Triple Helix Model (Etzkowitz, 1993; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000) which identifies in the above mentioned actors, key roles for innovation processes. The concept of the triple helix interprets the passage from a dominant industry-government dyad in the industrial society to an increasing triadic relationship between 17
universities, industry and government in the knowledge society, in which the potential of innovation and economic development lies in the more important role of university and in the hybridization of elements from universities, industry and government to create new formats and social institutions for the production, transfer and application of knowledge. This model, appears to satisfactorily answer to our need to develop a framework for effective knowledge co-creation in a multi-actor (and multi-perspective, then multi-disciplinary) context. We use this model, however, on the basis of recent literature advancements which rethink the approach to sustainability recognizing the need for a “co-creation” paradigm (Mauser et al., 2013; Trencher et al., 2014; Arnold, 2015) going beyond the spurious problem of the number of elements that must compose the helix to include civil society and environment in the model (Etzkowitz & Zhou, 2008; Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 2003; Carayannis, Barth, Campbell, 2012). Agreeing with this emerging co-creation view of the dynamic of innovation addressed to sustainable development, our focus is on knowledge co-creation as an outcome of the process of interaction between the three key actors of the triple helix. We, however, progress this idea integrating it within the Triple Bottom Line model of sustainability so giving a possible interpretation of the key that can explain the dynamics which produces the development outcome: it appears to be a ‘vortex’, like that of a helix, through which, over time, each on the three pillars or spheres (environment, economy and society) of the sustainability model are modified in the direction of a balanced or a unbalanced configuration, as in the current situation. Our framework, hence, embeds the Triple Helix model within the Triple Bottom Line model of Sustainability to complete the second step in the building of our framework with a Sustainability Co-Creation Model in which the configuration of the environmental, social and economic spheres is the outcome of the ‘vortex’ generated by the integrated action of the three actors as a triple helix (Fig. 5). Fig. 5 – An integrated Sustainability Co-creation Model Triple Helix
University
Government
Society
University
Industry
Industry
Government
Environment
Economy
Source: Barile and Saviano, 2015. www.asvsa.org
18
Thus, the inter- and trans-disciplinary collaboration for co-creating knowledge takes place through an interaction between three key actors of research and development processes. When effectively directed this interaction generates a convergence dynamic that creates the vortex in which actors sharing the sustainability view are easily involved. The three key actors are those of the basic model; their roles, however, are reinterpreted as follows: - Government - by interpreting the expectations of society and analyzing the status of ecosystem functioning of the environment, governments determine the system of constraints and rules that individuals and organizations have to follow in economic and social activities. . The system of constraints and rules defines a field of the ‘Necessities’, i.e. what has to be respected to preserve the balance between the three sphere of economic, social and environmental processes and promote development. - University - as an expression of the scientific world, academia is responsible for generating and disseminating knowledge necessary to development. In essence, the world of scientific research and education envisions future scenarios and creatively devises possible innovation trajectories, based on the system of constraints and rules accepted by society; in this way, a field of the ‘Possibilities’ is defined that, within the limits established, opens up multiple opportunities and development trajectories. - Industry – as an expression of the economic world, businesses have the task of translating the trajectories envisioned by (or together with) the scientific community, into concrete solution scenarios that have to harmonize the possibilities with the necessities, on the basis of an evaluation of social effectiveness, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability associated with the different trajectories. In this way, a field of the ‘Solutions’, i.e. implementations, is defined, which are ultimately responsible for the effective use of resources and the social and environmental impacts of the solutions implemented. The key element of the model is that all these processes must not occur in isolation but have to be performed in a harmonic setting where each actor respects shared constraints, rules and expectations, and interacts with other actors through a boundary crossing interaction thanks to which he/she becomes capable of taking on the role of others, performing a hybridization process (Saviano, 2015). This is how potential equilibrium can be achieved when dealing with the numerous trade-offs that characterize the dynamics of complex adaptive systems. By interacting at the various levels of the whole integrated functioning, actors will be able to better deal with the relationship between local and global levels of action, given that in complex adaptive systems’ behavior, the schemata of emerging interdependencies and interactions remains unpredictable. By effectively activating the helix vortex the three actors generate a synergistic dynamic of knowledge co-creation, which has the transformative power required to rebalance the three spheres. The latter, in fact, are continuously modified by the action of the helix which generates intertwined performing dynamics that define the development trajectories. The framework that integrates all the processes and dynamics discussed above is represented, as our final step, in Fig. 6, where the helix movement, i.e. the knowledge co -creation process, creates intertwined and interacting ‘cylinders’ of knowledge. A “3Pillars” Knowledge Co-creation Framework for a Service & Sustainability Science collaborative approach to knowledge creation is then developed including the main elements necessary to understand the rules and the mechanisms that allow balanced interaction between the economy, society and environment (as dimensions of reality) and, subsequently, between the actors involved in these processes for scientific, political, social or economic reasons. It is worth noting here that those appearing in the representation as ‘cylinders’, similarly to those appearing as the ‘spheres’ of sustainability, in reality, are the static descriptive representations of evolving dynamics which are drawn by the movement of the helix. The framework we propose, in fact, helping to shift from static “silos” to dynamically evolving configurations, may support the view of “an integrated approach that spans not only existing discipline-based silos within academic organizations (i.e., marketing, operations, and human resource management within a business 19
school) but also across academic organizations (i.e., business, engineering, and liberal arts)” (Spohrer & Maglio, 2006: 20). In our framework, then, as key actors, the Service Science and Sustainability Science scientific communities play relevant roles. They are fundamental connectors of the sciences involved in processes that impact on the environment, society and the economy. The positioning of the two communities, in particular, enables them to play strategic ‘interface’ roles also through ‘hybridization’ processes, both within and between the main scientific domains involved in economic growth, social progress and sustainable development, all integrated within a common paradigm of sustainability. In particular, to act within and between the ‘cylinders’, the two communities can leverage on their interdisciplinary orientation stimulating boundary crossing interaction within the respective fields, and on their transdisciplinary orientation stimulating the bridging role of social sciences with which they both are connected. More specifically, the framework positively emphasizes the hybrid positioning of Service Science which is strongly solution-oriented, as a significant expression of the business world which is directly engaged in the call for a Smarter Planet. This means, furthermore, that Service Science has a more direct responsibility for concretely putting in act sustainable business models. In this sense, Service Science can be interpreted as the ‘via’ or way through which sustainability can be embedded into the economy. This view appears to converge with the recent work by Wolfson et al. (2015), titled “Sustainability through service” which underlines the fundamental contribution of Service to put sustainability into practice. Sustainability Science, instead, dealing with social-ecological systems, can more effectively monitor the interactional ‘space’ between environmental and social sciences indicating constraints and necessities. Moreover, Sustainability Science can be connected with the economic field also ‘via’ social sciences and the related integration of actor-oriented and power dynamics perspectives with system dynamics. In short, the key role of social sciences to promote the co-creation approach and to make the whole challenge of a shared effort for realizing sustainability successful clearly emerges. Social sciences communities, leveraging on their bridging capabilities, are in the position of effectively stimulating bottom up actions from within and from outside the ‘cylinders’ in which they are included. Clearly, in this sense, the concept of interface role is promoted by the model thanks to which common barriers to interaction can be broken down rendering more fluid the transfer of information and knowledge to the various actors and fields. Thus, by promoting a boundary crossing interaction and creating interface connections within and between the two scientific communities, these bridging elements can support knowledge co-design and co-creation processes through which University-Industry-Government collaboration, necessary to address the challenge of a smarter and sustainable world, can be tested and further developed. This is the framework we propose, on which we intend to base a call for a multi-disciplinary research and professional engagement in the challenge of sustainability.
20
Fig. 6 - A “3Pillars”Knowledge Co-creation Framework for Service & Sustainability Science
Source: Barile and Saviano, 2015. www.asvsa.org
4.4 Service systems based on sustainability and smartness We can now attempt to give a potential response to the research question we posed at the beginning of our discussion relative to the relationship between a smarter and a more sustainable planet. In the light of our framework, it appears that a smarter planet does not necessarily imply a more sustainable planet: while sustainability, in terms of orienting our behaviors, implies involvement at the level of the values systems that guide our choices and decisions, smartness acts at a more operative (structural and organizational) level regarding the way processes are organized and managed from a dominant engineering and management problem solving view. Sustainability deals more with the ‘why’, with values, finalities and motivations; smartness deals more with the ‘how’, with the realization. Thus, in our framework, sustainability acts mainly between the ‘possibilities’ and the ‘necessities’, making decision and choices coherent, while smartness acts mainly between the ‘possibilities’ and the ‘solutions’, optimizing choice and operative processes. Accordingly, given the sustainability and effectiveness of a solution, smartness is also expected to make it efficient; efficiency, in turn, becomes relevant in contributing to valorize the use of scarce resources, thus positively impacting on sustainability. The point is that many sustainable solutions do not meet the economic expectations necessary further development. . On the other hand, many smart solutions, developed over time especially thanks to new technologies, do not contribute to sustainability and sustainable development. This means that, to be sustainable too, the development of smart solutions should be inspired by sustainability as a paradigm of reference. Then, a very smart solution, in our view, would be that 21
capable of simultaneously satisfying the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability criteria which complement the set of other fundamental criteria guiding decision making and problem solving at all levels of the governmental, social and economic domains. This is the reason why, by integrating their perspectives and knowledge resources, Sustainability Science and Service Science can be complementary to one another and develop relevant synergies in addressing the challenges of a more sustainable and smarter world. 5. Practical and research implications In a context of scientists and practitioners engaged in the study of social and economic processes from the multiple perspectives involved in the Naples Forum on Service community, a focus on managerial implications is necessary in the conclusion of our work. In this respect, as highlighted, the paper provides insights for rethinking management approaches by putting sustainability at the center of the Service Science research agenda. This orientation should also guide education programs for future managers (Saviano, 2014b). Within the Service Science research stream, there is in fact, a topic that is gaining growing attention. It is known as the notion of “T-shaped” professionals, i.e. decision makers capable of embracing a wider view of the phenomena of reality by going beyond the boundaries that divide knowledge domains and combining vertical expertise in one discipline or system with horizontal capabilities to move across disciplines and systems (Schneider & Bowen, 2009; Spohrer, Gregory & Ren, 2010; Spohrer & Freund, 2014)). Our work promotes a more collaborative approach at the various tiers of individual and organizational involvement in not only economic but also political and social decision making. Academia should lead this process because, as highlighted, it plays a crucial role, when looking at the government and economy fields in which, respectively, constraints and solutions must be linked to effectively work. The role of academia, hence of universities or research centers, is like that of a ‘firmware’ through which the use of existing ‘hardware’ can be valorized into ‘application software’ as solutions capable of satisfying the present needs of human beings without compromising those of future generations (Saviano, 2015). We hope that our paper succeeds in opening up new research trajectories by launching a Scienceled call for collaboration that overcomes the traditional divide between knowledge domains and communities thus contributing to fostering shared efforts that address the challenges of sustainability in a smarter planet.
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Websites http://en.wikipedia.org http://pubsonline.informs http://researcher.watson.ibm.com www-03.ibm.com www.asvsa.org www.capecodcommission.org www.scienzasostenibilita.org
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