The demolition of service scientists’ cultural-boundaries

More than 10 years ago, IBM launched Service Science as an open and aggregating initiative in an attempt to integrate different knowledge domains contributing to the study and better understanding of the dynamics of Service Systems and Smart Service Systems. Today, there are few published manuscripts that are effectively grounded in different knowledge domains. Moreover, in the fields of management and marketing, further investigation is needed to determine what are the effective contributes to scientific and theoretical advances in Service Science. This contribution to the second edition of the Service Science Handbook will detail the results of an investigation conducted through a bibliometric analysis of key scientific journals and books that, in their mission statements, have a clearly stated goal of reporting on advances in Service Science. It is demonstrated that the majority of the manuscripts seem to be grounded in vertical and specific scientific domains. Further, manuscripts produced by experts on management and marketing appear not to address models or theoretical propositions capable of advancing Service Science. Instead, these manuscripts are applicative and empirical studies, or they merely apply existing models or theories to specific Service Science issues or peculiarities. These findings should stimulate the growing Service Science community to improve the integration of the various scientific knowledge domains that are relevant to Service Science, to increase the number of co-authored articles by researchers with different interests, and to strongly promote scientific integration among scholars.