Kyoichi Kijima – författare

The present volume illustrates a rich and promising research field in service, service systems sciences, by combining and fusing two strands of sciences: the science of service systems and systems sciences of service. The scale, complexity, and interdependence of today’s service systems have been driven to an unprecedented level by globalization, demographic changes, and technology developments, so that it is absolutely necessary now for us to cultivate a new frontier of service research.

In response, service science has emerged during the past decade as a transdisciplinary research field that aims to clarify, analyze, and design the structure and process of service systems. Service science is strongly motivated to prove the science of service systems. To deal with complexity, interactions, and the network of, in, and among service systems, we need to take a more systemic view. Because systems sciences offers a way of thinking in relationships and interaction and theories and models to address complexity, it is legitimate to develop systems sciences of service by explicitly focusing on systemic properties of service and service systems.

As a volume of the Translational Systems Sciences series, this book emphasizes, in particular, a translational systems sciences perspective when the authors are approaching service, service systems, and service innovation. Indeed, the book employs systems sciences as a common framework or language not only to approach service in a holistic way but also to take a translational approach aiming to explain, analyze, design, and support service systems and their evolution.

The primary purpose of this handbook is to clearly describe the current state of theories of systems sciences and to support their use and practice. There are many ways in which systems sciences can be described. This handbook takes a multifaceted view of systems sciences and describes them in terms of a relatively large number of dimensions, from natural and engineering science to social science and systems management perspectives.

This book applies a decision systems science perspective to social systems, using the case of Southeast Asia to illustrate the concepts it sets forth. Southeast Asia is one of the most culturally diverse parts of the world, comprising 11 countries with a combined population of approximately 647 million people. The focus is on Indonesia, the largest and most populous country in the region.

Indonesia is an archipelago that is highly heterogeneous. It is the world’s fourth most populous country, with some 280 million people spread over 17,508 islands. Great diversity is seen in its culture; however, most of the people greatly value collectiveness or exhibit high sociability and solidarity, i.e., a communal culture. In the culture of business in Indonesia, relationships are absolutely essential as a basis of decision making, thus it is quite different than that found in the West. The ensuing daily complexities require intensive interaction, negotiation processes, and coordination. In this context, common theories and best practices that are generated on the basis of more simplified assumptions often fail. Systems science offers an approach that can take these issues into account and potentially overcome such complexities.

This book defines a social system as a complex interconnected set of entities that organize the life of human beings and that are implemented through a process of shared experience and creative tension such that they demonstrate emergent characteristics. To elucidate this definition, the discussion in the book aims to bridge and integrate basic research founded in systems concepts, logic, theories, and models of systems practices and methodologies into a process of social systems research. That process involves engaging various stakeholders in academia, business, and government so that in collaboration they can solve common problems based on multidisciplinary approaches—ones that encompass hard and soft and quantitative and qualitative systems as well as negotiations and simulations. 

The book has three major parts, the first of which discusses the importance of decisions in social system science that can be applied in managing complexities. The second part describes the use of multidisciplinary approaches for social systems, and the third deals with efforts to apply previously accepted concepts to real cases in Indonesia.