A conceptual framework for workforce management: Impacts from service science and s-d logic

Abstract

Over the past four decades the service sector shaped advanced forms of interaction between human and technology actors with a wide range of actor combinations like human-to-human, human-to-technology, or technology-to-technology. The understanding of workforce, on the other hand, has remained largely unchanged in recent decades. Workforce, workforce planning, workforce management, workforce diversity and so on, focus almost exclusively on the human actor. Therefore, the authors see the need for a new understanding of workforce and for the explanation of the mechanisms and interdependencies of workforce management. Based on the theoretical concepts of Service Science and S-D Logic as well as the approaches of meso- and micro-foundation the context of workforce and workforce management is studied and a conceptual framework for workforce management and a new definition of workforce is derived.