Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56529
Technology end, Macauley and her colleague, Liping Zhao, a professor of com- puter science at the University of Manchester, have formed the Web site www.SSMEnetuk.org to attract attention to the field, promote ser- vice-based curricula, and encourage research collaboration. IBM has partnered with com- panies such as Oracle, Cisco, Sun, Xerox, and Microsoft to support research, award faculty, and provide fellowships to doctoral students to encourage more work in the disci- pline. Together, these companies have formed the Services Research and Innovation Institute (SRII). The goal of SRII, says Menon, is to fund research in service science in areas ranging from healthcare and finance to IT and business pro- cesses. Another goal, he adds, is to design new models to improve the quality, efficiency, and profitability of business services. FAR-REACHING EFFECTS As companies place more empha- sis on services, they are creating a new business model that will require a specific set of skills from business graduates, says Macauley. "Instead of the service supporting the prod- ucts, the products are now support- ing the service." Technology promises to have an especially significant impact on the extent to which companies adopt service-based business models. New online advertising models, for instance, are likely to become more customized to suit individual users. The rise of social media like Second Life, Twitter, and Facebook also will add new dimensions to the ser- vices industry. The growth of a service-driven economy has far-reaching implica- tions for business school curricula, she adds. "There's still so much we don't know about the cost compo- nents of sales, delivery, financial man- agement, and growth when it comes to services," she says. "We need more educational opportunities and more research in this area." Graduates with service-oriented skill sets could have tremendous impact on how well people live their lives in the 21st century, says Menon. "Just look at what we're trying to accomplish—designing more intelli- gent transportation systems, making a smarter energy grid, avoiding health- care mistakes that kill 100,000 people each year in the U.S. alone," he says. With a solid understanding of how services are delivered, students will be better equipped to look holistically at big problems, Menon says. They'll see not only how sci- ence, technology, and psychology interact to create these problems— but also how to re-engineer the interactions to solve them. For information about IBM's SSME initiative, visit www.ibm. com/developerworks/spaces/ssme. For information about the Service Research and Innovation Institute, visit www.thesrii.org. 64 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 Can Facebook Train Better Workers? Although many companies view the use of sites like Facebook as drains to productivity, a researcher at the Uni- versity of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada begs to differ. In a recent study, Nicole Haggerty, an assistant profes- sor of information systems, found that using Facebook and other social networking sites might help employ- ees develop stronger communication and technological skills. In several studies, Haggerty and former doctoral student Yinglei Wang measured a skill they call "virtual competence." The term refers to workers' confidence in their use of collaborative technolo- gy. In one study involving Ivey stu- dents, for example, the researchers found that participants who were not well-versed in social networking did worse in e-learning environ- ments than those who were. In fact, students who were accustomed to online social networking were not as satisfied with e-learning environ- ments that did not include a social networking component. Another study involved Ivey graduates who now worked in man- agement positions. The researchers found that those with more experi- ence on social networks reported higher job satisfaction and displayed better job performance. These findings suggest, for example, that Ontario officials made a mistake in 2007 when they banned government employees from using Facebook during working hours. Instead, says Haggerty, all managers may want to make social network- ing technologies a bigger part of the working environment, because