Human-Centered Digitalization and Services

329 Pages·2019·4.693 MB·English

by  Marja Toivonen, Eveliina Saari

Translational Systems Sciences 19
Marja Toivonen
Eveliina Saari Editors
Human-
Centered
Digitalization
and Services
Translational Systems Sciences
Volume 19
Editors in Chief
Kyoichi Kijima, Tokyo, Japan
Hiroshi Deguchi, Yokohama, Japan
Editorial Board
Shingo Takahashi, Tokyo, Japan
Hajime Kita, Kyoto, Japan
Toshiyuki Kaneda, Nagoya, Japan
Akira Tokuyasu, Tokyo, Japan
Koichiro Hioki, Okayama, Japan
Yuji Aruka, Hachioiji, Japan
Kenneth Bausch, Riverdale, GA, USA
Jim Spohrer, San Jose, CA, USA
Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Wien, Austria
John Pourdehnad, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Mike C. Jackson, Hull, UK
Gary S. Metcalf, Atlanta, GA, USA
Marja Toivonen, Helsinki, Finland
Sachihiko Harashina, Ichikawa, Japan
In 1956, Kenneth Boulding explained the concept of General Systems Theory as a skeleton
of science. He describes that it hopes to develop something like a “spectrum” of theories—a
system of systems which may perform the function of a “gestalt” in theoretical construction.
Such “gestalts” in special fields have been of great value in directing research towards the
gaps which they reveal.
There were, at that time, other important conceptual frameworks and theories, such as
cybernetics. Additional theories and applications developed later, including synergetics,
cognitive science, complex adaptive systems, and many others. Some focused on principles
within specific domains of knowledge and others crossed areas of knowledge and practice,
along the spectrum described by Boulding.
Also in 1956, the Society for General Systems Research (now the International Society
for the Systems Sciences) was founded. One of the concerns of the founders, even then, was
the state of the human condition, and what science could do about it.
The present Translational Systems Sciences book series aims at cultivating a new frontier
of systems sciences for contributing to the need for practical applications that benefit people.
The concept of translational research originally comes from medical science for enhancing
human health and well-being. Translational medical research is often labeled as “Bench to
Bedside.” It places emphasis on translating the findings in basic research (at bench) more
quickly and efficiently into medical practice (at bedside). At the same time, needs and
demands from practice drive the development of new and innovative ideas and concepts. In
this tightly coupled process it is essential to remove barriers to multi-disciplinary collaboration.
The present series attempts to bridge and integrate basic research founded in systems
concepts, logic, theories and models with systems practices and methodologies, into a process
of systems research. Since both bench and bedside involve diverse stakeholder groups,
including researchers, practitioners and users, translational systems science works to create
common platforms for language to activate the “bench to bedside” cycle.
In order to create a resilient and sustainable society in the twenty-first century, we
unquestionably need open social innovation through which we create new social values, and
realize them in society by connecting diverse ideas and developing new solutions. We assume
three types of social values, namely: (1) values relevant to social infrastructure such as safety,
security, and amenity; (2) values created by innovation in business, economics, and
management practices; and, (3) values necessary for community sustainability brought about
by conflict resolution and consensus building.
The series will first approach these social values from a systems science perspective by
drawing on a range of disciplines in trans-disciplinary and cross-cultural ways. They may
include social systems theory, sociology, business administration, management information
science, organization science, computational mathematical organization theory, economics,
evolutionary economics, international political science, jurisprudence, policy science,
socioinformation studies, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, complex adaptive systems
theory, philosophy of science, and other related disciplines. In addition, this series will
promote translational systems science as a means of scientific research that facilitates the
translation of findings from basic science to practical applications, and vice versa.
We believe that this book series should advance a new frontier in systems sciences by
presenting theoretical and conceptual frameworks, as well as theories for design and
application, for twenty-first-century socioeconomic systems in a translational and
transdisciplinary context.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11213
Marja Toivonen • Eveliina Saari
Editors
Human-Centered
Digitalization and Services
Editors
Marja Toivonen Eveliina Saari
University of Helsinki Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
Helsinki, Finland Helsinki, Finland
ISSN 2197-8832 ISSN 2197-8840 (electronic)
Translational Systems Sciences
ISBN 978-981-13-7724-2 ISBN 978-981-13-7725-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7725-9
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019
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Preface
Background to the Topics of the Book
The digitalization of services has been marketed to us in terms of time saving, new
means of participation, and the cost efficiency of service systems. What has not
been discussed so much is how the digitalization of service ecosystems is inter-
twined with the institutional logics of providing services to citizens. No political
decision-making opportunity has been offered to citizens for us to decide whether
or not we want digital services. Nevertheless, digital interfaces revolutionize the
relationship between the service worker and the user, and ubiquitous ICT has a sig-
nificant impact on our everyday lives.
This book provides a topical overview of the impacts of digitalization from the
viewpoints of services, work, and everyday human life. Its basic argument is that a
prominent issue in digitalization is the development of new types of services which
are enabled by digitalization but often buried under the emphasis on technology and
various devices. The users of digital services, whether they are acting for fun or
tending to their social responsibilities, are suddenly doing the cognitive work previ-
ously conducted by service workers. This phenomenon, called heteromation, as
opposed to automation, involves hidden human labor often unrecognized by the
participants themselves, whose social media activity or clicks in service platforms
may be transformed into valuable data or bring value to the service provider, as
these self-service systems save service providers resources by eliminating paid
workers.
The book summarizes the 20-year history of research on the relationship between
ICT and service innovation, highlighting the fact that ongoing digitalization is a
qualitatively different phenomenon and means a paradigmatic change. For example,
the digitalization of the financial sector introduced citizens to the service innovation
of the internet bank, which gradually but radically diminished face-to-face service
and the number of bank offices and clerks. Currently topical is how digitalization is
implemented in services that are not based on simple technical transactions, but that
gain their significant value from emphatic encounters between human beings, such
v
vi Preface
as education and social and health care. Furthermore, several countries—like
Finland—are currently obliging public services to provide citizens with digital ser-
vices, which may lead to diminishing face-to-face contact points with civil servants.
Since there might be one million citizens in Finland who cannot or do not want to
use mobile phones or ICT devices, the Ministry of Finance began national-level
actions in 2018 to provide citizens with sufficient digital support. Digital support for
learning is offered by libraries, service providers, associations, and adult education
centers; the best regional model for organizing this in a sustainable way is currently
being tried out.
It seems that the power of technology in everyday life and in society is currently
accelerating, since, after the conventional computation of service processes, Big
Data and artificial intelligence are now expected to be adopted as the main tools for
service systems. There is a tendency to think that technology development is inevi-
table, with a logic beyond human control, and it is often referred to as “technologi-
cal determinism”. However, critics of technological determinism have argued that
there is always a human element in the development and adoption of technology,
which makes the future more complex and unanticipated. The all-encompassing
integration and transmission of data raises critical human issues, such as maintain-
ing human dignity and individual autonomy. Digitalization also creates new needs
for interaction practices with broad participation, trust, and willingness to share
knowledge at their core. This book highlights how we need to increase co-creation
and citizen empowerment to make digitalization support the development of well-
being and sustainability.
The empirical analyses of the book focus on the changing logic of services and
service work. The book explains how employees and professionals can and should
be involved in designing their future work and digital service innovations, as well as
in evaluating them. As the face-to-face servant role may partly fade away when the
technological interface pushes workers into back offices, these workers may obtain
opportunities to create new roles. As Bowen anticipates, they may become innova-
tors of new services on the basis of their deep experience with clients; enablers,
helping and training clients to use technology; differentiators, providing a genuinely
empathetic and personal face to the surface of the service; or coordinators, handling
integration and building bridges between different offerings. However, in order for
this to take place, management needs to see its employees as significant actors who
do not only adapt to ICT systems, but also have the opportunity to modify and influ-
ence them. Proactiveness, empowerment, and participation in innovation endeavors
are significant ways with which users and service professionals can guarantee
meaningful work in the socio-technological transition. Supporting employee-driven
innovation and implementing a developmental evaluation culture at workplaces are
means of ensuring work-related well-being and facilitate sustainable human-
centered digitalization.
The book was initiated in our project called “The revolution of service econ-
omy – Human being at the core of digitalization,” which was funded by Business
Finland and the participating organizations in 2015–2018. The project opened up a
view of the digital service innovations of the Finnish public sector and third sector
Preface vii
in the contexts of early childhood education, social and health care, housing for the
elderly and the everyday life of young people. This book reports the research results
of these innovations. We would like to thank our colleagues Mervi Hasu, Helinä
Melkas, Pirjo Korvela, Kirsi Hyytinen, Johanna Leväsluoto, Satu Pekkarinen, Sari
Käpykangas, Mirva Hyypiä, and Anne Nordlund for their contributions. To gain a
broader and deeper perspective, we invited our international and domestic collabo-
rators to contribute to the understanding of human-centeredness in digitalization.
We warmly acknowledge the contributions of Ian Miles, Lars Fuglsang, Kyoichi
Kijima, Mattias Elg, Sanna Sekki, Jussi Silvonen, Maria Røhnebæk, Marit Engen,
Trude Hella Eide, Liudmila Bagdoniene, Aurelija Blazeviciene, Gintare
Valkauskiene, Oliver Alexander Tafdrup, Bjarke Lindsø Andersen, Cathrine Hasse,
Kentaro Watanabe, Marketta Niemelä, Tom Hope, Nina Janasik, Joanna J. Bryson,
and Andreas Theodorou. All these contributions form a rich whole, with inspiring
ideas and novel insights. Finally, we wish to thank Professor Kyoichi Kijima who
provided us with the opportunity to include our book as a volume in the Series of
Translational Systems Sciences.
We recommend this book to readers who seek an overview of the current under-
standing of the human side of digitalization and are looking for concrete cases that
illustrate this topic in several countries. Although the chapters are scientific texts
through which we participate in the scientific discussion on the digitalization of
work and everyday life, we hope that this book finds its way to the hands of not only
researchers, but also service practitioners, professionals, managers, and technology
developers.
Helsinki, Finland Marja Toivonen
Eveliina Saari
Structure of the Book
The book is divided into four parts, and each part includes four chapters. The first
part “Theoretical Perspectives on Digitalization and Service Innovation” provides
an overview of the innovative potential of digitalization in the service context and
presents three topical approaches for the analysis of human-centric service innova-
tion: a practice-based view, a systems view, and the integrative approach of multi-
criteria and developmental evaluation of innovations.
The book is opened by an important pioneer of service innovation research: Ian
Miles. In Chap. 1, he describes the development of the service economy from the
1950s to the present, using his own life history as an illustrative example. He starts
from the description of the transfer from small-scale businesses to mass markets and
standardized services (“Service economy 1.0”). The next development stage
(“Service economy 2.0”) witnesses the adoption of many technological appliances,
especially in the back offices of organizations. The uptake of the Internet and the
development of online services and platforms characterize the current stage “Service
economy 3.0.” During this stage, the social implications of technology have become
prominent: consumer co-production as the positive side of the development and
polarization and inequality its negative side. Finally, the author identifies many
signs of “Service Economy 4.0,” which will not only effectively utilize large-scale
data analytics and artificial intelligence, but will also require human-centered design
and social innovations in order to benefit users and solve global challenges.
In Chap. 2, Lars Fuglsang discusses human-centric service innovations in public
services. A problem in these innovations—typically carried out via focus groups,
living labs and democratic approaches—is their experimental nature, which makes
them short-lived and nonspread. As an alternative, the author explores a practice-
based approach that recognizes the messy reality of everyday life and aims to under-
stand the real practices of co-innovation. A central argument is that innovation is not
a readymade entity from the beginning, or a specific procedure, it can emerge more
invisibly from interactive processes. The chapter defines three contexts of human-
centric innovation (individual, group, and collective) and three innovative practices
(bricolage, the system approach, and the systemic approach). Based on these, a
typology of nine practices of human-centric innovation is tentatively laid out and
ix
x Structure of the Book
explored via a case study. The chapter shows how human-centric service innovation
is integrated with co-production in public services, defines how a practice-based
model treats knowledge and learning, and discusses the advantage of the practice-
based model from a managerial, employee, and a societal perspective.
Chapter 3, authored by Kyoichi Kijima and Marja Toivonen, applies a systems
perspective. It starts with the argument that a technological focus is not enough for
the successful development and application of digitalization; the crucial issue is
how to link technological and human resources together. Systems thinking is essen-
tial for understanding the interdependencies resulting from these linkages at differ-
ent levels: in activity systems at the micro level, in networks and ecosystems at the
meso level, and in the institutional set-up that supports and regulates the develop-
ment at the macro level. After the presentation of the basic principles and benefits of
systems thinking, Chapter 3 analyzes these interdependencies in more detail. A cen-
tral message throughout is that the value of a specific resource depends on its rela-
tion to other resources. The highly dynamic nature of the development of
digitalization is also emphasized: at the end, the chapter examines how the systems’
perspective can be applied in conditions of change.
Chapter 4, authored by Kirsi Hyytinen, Eveliina Saari, and Mattias Elg, develops
a human-centered co-evaluation method for the evaluation of service innovations in
the context of digital services. Its starting point is the need to strengthen the role of
users and employees in innovation and the growing importance of the social and
sustainable aspects of innovation. The method integrates a multi-criteria evaluation
framework with a process of developmental evaluation. In this way, it takes into
account the various impacts of innovations on the one hand and supports multi-
voiced evaluation and continuous learning on the other. The method emphasizes
human and societal impacts, which are analyzed in parallel with the traditional
techno-economic characteristics of innovations. It makes human-centeredness and
sustainability more visible as values than traditional evaluations and thus guides
development toward more inclusive and ethical digitalization.
The second part of the book “Approaches and Case Studies on Human Interaction
in the Service Context” opens up interaction issues linked to the digital context. The
part starts with a study of the changes that digitalization has caused in the everyday
lives of families and young people. The second chapter shows that the impact of
digitalization may be limited in some service areas: the chapter discusses services
for refugees and immigrants. In the third chapter, digitalization is again one aspect
of the development; here the focus is on the co-creation between professionals and
patients in health care. The part ends with a chapter that analyzes technological
breakdowns, showing that they are not only nuisances but may be used as sources
of learning.
The changing structure of everyday life is the research topic of Chap. 5, authored
by Anne Nordlund, Sanna Sekki, Pirjo Korvela, and Jussi Silvonen. This chapter
examines the impacts of digitalization on the mastery of everyday lives of families
and young people. The data were gathered during three projects using field notes
and in-depth interviews. The analyses reveal the multidimensional nature of digi-
talized daily life: passiveness on the one hand, and the permeability of digitalization