Abstract:

Service companies are the key drivers of the western economies as services account for 74 per cent of GNP in the Euro area. Traditional distinctions between manufacturing and service companies are blurring as manufacturing companies increasingly refine themselves as providers of customer value instead of emphasizing their role as producers of manufactured goods. Moreover, according to the new paradigm of “service-dominant logic” (Vargo & Lush 2004, 2006) the customer role is changing as customers are taking a central position in the development of services as active co-creators of the service experiences. The service orientation forces higher education institutions (HEIs) to take a critical look on their capabilities to respond to these changes.
This paper addresses the following question: how should business studies curricula reflect the requirements of the changing service environment? The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it contributes to the discussion of how the new service paradigm will affect business school curricula thus filling a gap of empirical studies in this field. Secondly, it offers a description of an innovative curriculum design process at a HEI which encourages future oriented dialogue with its stakeholders.
The data collection method in this project emphasized constructive and iterative nature of making sense of the future. HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences invited external and internal experts to a Delphi panel and asked them to answer to two online Delphi surveys. In between the surveys the panelists discussed service trends and competence requirements in smaller workshops which represented different sectors of Finnish industry. This paper is based on content analysis of the qualitative data collected in this project, ie. panelists’ open answers to the survey questions (n= 127 and n= 67) and the group discussions in nine workshops.
The results of the study indicate that the shift towards service dominant business will create a strong need for a new set of competences. The panelists’ answers reflected several of the key concepts presented in the paradigm of service dominant logic. The service competence definitions were divided into following categories: customer centricity, co-doing, idea generation & productization, organizational and network orchestration, cultural competence, technology utilization skills and self-leadership. In order to prepare graduates for tomorrow’s business life, more emphasis needs to be placed on teaching these competences to higher education students

Keywords:

Undergraduate business studies, foresight, service dominant logic.