Working Group Content

History

Responsible management is needed within service systems, because humans live in service systems, including, families, communities, organizations, and nations, yet these systems often fail to truly serve humanity.

For instance, at the macro level, Earth itself can be seen as a service system: a fragile shared support system that needs wise stewardship to sustain all forms of life. At the meso organizational level, corporations and nation-states can introduce structural barriers that can hinder human well-becoming, often creating injustices in access to resources and services. At the micro level, human well-being is significantly limited by macro and meso level service system failures. Across these system levels, many service systems are failing to serve humanity and the other beings on our planet wisely, creating severe service system failures that threaten our shared future. The global refugee crisis starkly illustrates these service system failures.

In 2026, discussion among Transformative Service Researchers on the global refugee crisis led to the possibility of forming a PRME Working Group to serve micro, meso, and macro human needs, which led to the group name “PRME Working Group on Service Systems for Humanity.”

This Working Group directly aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and PRME’s mission to equip business schools and leaders to advance responsible management education that promotes sustainable development, social justice, and ethical stewardship of resources at every level of society.

Purpose

The PRME Working Group on Service Systems for Humanity seeks to enable research, teaching, and practices that wisely transform service systems for the well-becoming of humanity and the living planet.

Goals
Thee main goals of the PRME Working Group on Service Systems for Humanity are to:

Cultivate serving humanity scholarship
Cultivate serving humanity teaching and pedagogical materials
Facilitate serving humanity communities with students, scholars, practitioners, NGOs, and policymakers

The outcomes we seek are based on Transformative Service Research: to reduce suffering, improve well-being, and enable well-becoming.

Research

The group will encourage collaborative research on serving humanity from any disciplinary perspective, which will be published in journals and presented in academic conferences.

Engagement Opportunities

Presenting in academic conferences, organizing serving humanity webinars, and offering workshops for working group members, PRME Ssignatories, and the public.

The PRME Working Group on Service Systems for Humanity maintains a symbiotic relationship with ServCollab. They share the connected priority of building a serving humanity logic that establishes the foundations for wiser service systems. The groups invites scholars to collaborate in advancing the science and art of serving humanity. The collaboration allows for connected communities of practice and shared initiatives.

Resource Development

Creating serving humanity teaching and pedagogical materials, curricula modules, and implementation toolkits, and making these available for business schools and organizations.

Stay tuned for additional resources to be uploaded in the resources tab!

Co-Chairs

Samuel Petros Sebhatu, Karlstad University, Sweden

samuel.sebhatu@kau.se

Raymond P. Fisk, Texas State University, United States of America

ray.fisk@servcollab.org

Please fill out the form to join the Working Group.

Working Group Outputs

Conceptualizing Service Ethics for the Complexity of Modern Service Interactions

This article conceptualizes service ethics for modern interactions enabled by digital service platforms. By integrating theoretical insights with illustrative narratives, this article demonstrates the potential impact of digital service platforms on non-customer well-being, highlighting instances of exploitation and unintended consequences.

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Sebhatu, Samuel Petros, Qusay Hamdan and Raymond P. Fisk (2024), "Conceptualizing Service Ethics for the Complexity of Modern Service Interactions," The Service Industries Journal, 44 (9-10), 766–788.

Recommended Resources

Transformative Service Research: An Agenda for the Future

This article conceptualizes and presents a research agenda for the emerging area of transformative service research, which lies at the intersection of service research and transformative consumer research and focuses on well-being outcomes related to service and services.

Anderson, Laurel, Amy L. Ostrom, Canan Corus, Raymond P. Fisk, Andrew S. Gallan, Mario Giraldo, Martin Mende, Mark Mulder, Steven W. Rayburn, Mark S. Rosenbaum, Kunio Shirahada and Jerome D. Williams (2013), "Transformative Service Research: An Agenda for the Future," Journal of Business Research, 66 (8), 1203–1210.

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Service Research Priorities: Designing Sustainable Service Ecosystems

Discusses three key service research priorities: large-scale and complex service ecosystems for transformative impact, platform ecosystems and marketplaces, and services for disadvantaged consumers and communities.

Field, Joy M., Darima Fotheringham, Mahesh Subramony, Anders Gustafsson, Amy L. Ostrom, Katherine N. Lemon, Ming-Hui Huang and Janet R. McColl-Kennedy (2021), "Service Research Priorities: Designing Sustainable Service Ecosystems," Journal of Service Research, 24 (4), 462–479.

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Elevating the Human Experience (HX) through Service Research Collaborations: Introducing ServCollab

Elevating the human experience (HX) through research collaborations is the purpose of this article. ServCollab facilitates and supports service research collaborations that seek to reduce human suffering and improve human well-being. To catalyze this initiative, the authors introduce ServCollab’s three human rights goals (serve, enable and transform), standards of justice for serving humanity (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) and research approaches for serving humanity (service design and community action research)

Fisk, Raymond P., Linda Alkire, Laurel Anderson, David E. Bowen, Thorsten Gruber, Amy L. Ostrom and Lia Patrício (2020), "Elevating the Human Experience (HX) through Service Research Collaborations: Introducing ServCollab," Journal of Service Management, 31 (4), 615–635.

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Service Ecosystem Health: A Transformative Approach to Elevating Service Science

This article diagnoses various crises of human service systems (e.g., COVID-19, inequality, and climate change) and proposes the metaphor of service ecosystem health for reimagining service science in a post-pandemic world.

Fisk, Raymond P. and Linda Alkire (2021), "Service Ecosystem Health: A Transformative Approach to Elevating Service Science," Service Science, 13 (4), 194–204.

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Enabling a Service Thinking Mindset: Practices for the Global Service Ecosystem

The purpose of this paper is to reframe the mindsets of scholars, firms and public policy decision-makers through enabling Service Thinking practices. Service Thinking is defined as a just, mutualistic and human-centered mindset for creating and regenerating service systems that meet the needs of people and the living planet. Service Thinking is enabled by five practices (service empathy, service inclusion, service respect, service integrity and service courage).

Alkire, Linda, Rebekah Russell-Bennett, Josephine Previte and Raymond P. Fisk (2023), "Enabling a Service Thinking Mindset: Practices for the Global Service Ecosystem," Journal of Service Management, 34 (3), 580–602.

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SDG Editorial: Improving Life on Planet Earth – a Call to Action for Service Research to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This editorial organizes the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into seven ServCollab service research themes to provide a way forward for service research that improves human and planetary life. Service scholars are urged to pursue collaborative research that reduces suffering, improves well-being and enables well-becoming for the sustainability and prosperity of Planet Earth.

Russell-Bennett, Rebekah, Mark S. Rosenbaum, Raymond P. Fisk and Maria M. Raciti (2024), "SDG Editorial: Improving Life on Planet Earth – a Call to Action for Service Research to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)," Journal of Services Marketing, 38 (2), 145–152.

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Elevating the Human Experience through Service Standards: Insights from the Global Refugee Crisis

Building on Transformative Service Research (TSR), this article proposes a set of three service standards for serving humanity; develops the Agency, Dignity and Diversity (ADD) Service Standards Framework; integrates these standards with human experience; and then applies this framework to refugee service experiences.

Gnusowski, Marek and Raymond P. Fisk (2024), "Elevating the Human Experience through Service Standards: Insights from the Global Refugee Crisis," Journal of Service Management, 35 (5), 678–692.

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Cultivating Wiser Service Systems through Communication

Our purpose is to offer the service research field a framework for cultivating wiser service systems via wise communication. Wiser service systems are necessary to tackle humanity’s complex social, economic, and environmental challenges.

Moulton-Tetlock, Edythe, Sophia Town, Hoori Rafieian, Canan Corus and Raymond P. Fisk (2024), "Cultivating Wiser Service Systems through Communication," Journal of Service Management, 35 (4), 547–569.

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Viewpoint: Wisdom-Enabled Business Research: A Scholar-Activist Framework for Social Impact

The purpose of this paper is to present a scholar-activist framework for social impact based on wisdom-enabled business research. Humanity’s complex service systems are explored, encompassing interactions among customers, employees, colleagues, society and the planet. The scholar-activist framework is based on three phases: designing collaborative wisdom into business research problems, redesigning service institutions to better serve humanity and co-designing social impact solutions for the human experience

Fisk, Raymond P. (2025), "Viewpoint: Wisdom-Enabled Business Research: A Scholar-Activist Framework for Social Impact," Journal of Social Impact in Business Research, 1 (2), 39–52.

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