Transcript Virtual Communities of Practice Research Overview

Managing Research in
Services:
Themes,Tips, Take-ways and
Doggy-bags
Ko de Ruyter
Maastricht University
The Netherlands
www.marketingsite.nl
Gotta have a model: the
Virtuous Circle
Source: Community Intelligence Labs, 2002
How to interpret this circle?
scan the journals for…
 New
ways of organizing boundaryspanning structures
 Increased use of technologymediated service delivery
 New types of service encounters…
 Unleashing creativity, that’s the real
challenge
Unleashing creativity, that’s the
real challenge
(and you get to do cool research)
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The power of technologies is fueling research
opportunities
But…do not get carried away from theoretical
anchor points
Remember, not every reviewer will know about
service delivery in snow boarding virtual
communities
Can anybody cite 20 papers on e-services
published in the top journals this year?
Keep focused on the contribution!
Borrowing creatively from other
disciplines
 Services
by definition is a multidisciplinary field
 There is a lot of stuff going on in
neighbouring disciplines
 Some of this can be adapted directly
to fit your purpose, some needs a
little bit of unleashing the creativity
Economies of scale and scope
Most journals are cutting back on the
number of pp and my attention span as a
reviewer is decreasing!
 What is the contribution?
 There is no room for wall-to-wall models
 Yet, programmatic, nomological networks
do have advantages (left-overs taste
great the next day)
 Manage research from a data-base
perspective
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A data-base…
 Containes
a large number of data
fields
 Combines different types of data
(cross-sectional-longitudinal,
customer-employee perceptions,
subjective-objective data)
 Lobby for the creation of a data-base
of respondents at your school
Work with industry
A
well-developed idea is easy to sell,
just do not expect any money
 Practitioners sometimes do have
well-developed ideas as well!
 You have access to a reality check,
real respondents, technological
support, internal databases and
maybe more…
Work with (external) experts
Again, a well-developed idea is easy to
sell, just expect to do a lot of the work in
the initial stage…
 Network at conferences, explore your
supervisor’s network. Try to find
somebody who is willing to collaborate
(most famous service researches are
friendly and approachable!)
 If you can’t beat them, ask the
econometricians to join you!
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Here’s the bottom line
Getting published is:
…necessary for your career
…necessary to engage in a dialogue
with other academics
…necessary for your teaching
…necessary to improve your work
…and probably the most frustrating
aspect of early academic life!
Difficulties (that’s what they call
opportunities)
Many different journals
 Many different editorial practices
 Arbitrary?!
 “the big names secret handshake”
 Nationality/university reputation
 Coping with reviewers’ comments, they
will raise the Contribution issue!
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Publish-don’t perish strategy
Manage publications as a portfolio: A’s
are the greatest, B’s are still great, but
also realize that focused C’s are great
reputation builders!
 Writing is behavior…like other behavior,
the more often you write, the better you’ll
get at it!
 Be alert for special issues
 Scan a wider population than just
marketing journals (OB, Psych, IS,
Dec.Sciences, Operations)
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Take-aways…
 Use
any chance to present your
work
 Select the journal before you start
writing
 The C-word: Contribution!
 Ask others to read your article
(“strategic” scholars)
 Spend a lot of time on the referee
report!
 See it as a learning process…
…and doggy-bags
At a 3% acceptance rate, it pays to leave
it for a little while
 If you get rejected, put it in the fridge
 Heat up the stuff, try another marketing
journal
 Try another journal in a totally different
field (not at the same time, that’s a
serious no-no)
 Spice it up, with additional analyses
 Try the same journal, after an editor
change
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Questions
Thank you for your
attention!