Towards a model of services based on co-creation, abstraction and restriction

Abstract

The term service is today defined and used in a multitude of ways, and there is no usage characteristic that is common for all of these ways. As a consequence natural language terms used for describing services are ambiguous and often confusing. The lack of a common agreed upon definition of the term makes it difficult to understand and classify services as well as distinguish them from non-service concepts. In this paper, we do not propose a new definition of service but a model of services that helps in analysing the concept. The model is based on three perspectives: service as a means for co-creation of value, service as a means for abstraction, and service as a means for providing restricted access to resources. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.