| Abstract: | The global shift towards a service-based economy has led many organisations to rethink their operations and strategies from a service-centred point of view, which is intangible, customeroriented and relational (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). Professionals and scholars from different disciplines have subsequently pioneered practices and research in the field of service. As a response, Service Design, with its creative- and people-centred nature emerged as a distinct discipline.
Designing a service system requires input from all stakeholders, which include internal stakeholders from the different organisational functions, as well as external stakeholders such as user groups and supply teams. When design specialists are involved, they are expected to bring skills and approaches that not only balance complex stakeholders’ requirements but also create embodied solutions to meet these needs. Consequently, to achieve the best solution, acknowledgment and input from multiple stakeholders are essential to designer’s decision-making.
This paper reports emerging insights from some British Service Design practitioners who were interviewed as part of the empirical studies of an ongoing PhD research project. The project initially asked, ’How do designers, as external consultants, manage multiple stakeholder involvement in Service Design projects?’
In this paper, the theoretical and empirical contexts are briefly reviewed, which lead to three specific research questions. A three-stage qualitative research approach is then introduced of which two have so far been carried out. Two case studies are introduced, which lead to two emerging categories of designers’ approaches to multiple stakeholder management, namely leading and facilitating. In order to develop these emerging categories, further study is required, which forms the final stage of this research project and which is detailed at the end of this paper. |
Ph.D., Lic. Theses
