About

About

RESER (The European  Association for REsearch on SERvices) is a network of research groups and individuals active in services research and policy formulation, mainly located in European countries.

The Association was established in 1988 at a time when knowledge on service employment and industries was scarce and there was a limited understanding of the role of services in economic and social restructuring.

The challenge for service scholars in the 21st Century is to contribute to the understanding of the economics and society. The New Millennium brings a new complexity of systems, interactions, networks, technology and social issues at the core of developed and developing economies and societies and the need of rethinking the relationships between businesses, organizations and public actors.

The RESER 2017 conference aims to capture frontier thinking in service research and to set a new research agenda to make sense of the full picture of economies and society as complex networks and systems of services. More specifically the conference of this year wants to open a reflection in two directions. On the one hand, we want to think with researchers and practitioners about the particular features of advance services sector. On the other hand, we hope to talk deeply about the contribution of the city to the development of this advance service sector. Bilbao aims to promote a third transformation based in the development of a plethora of advanced services;  thus, we hope that new and interesting perspectives and contributions coming from researchers will help in this direction.

Service scholars face new challenges within a more complex and inter-dependent world that needs to achieve a balanced, inclusive and sustainable growth. RESER 2017 will pay special attention to the servitization issue that is changing the business models of a lot of industries around the world. Basque Country is one of the leading regions in industrial development in Europe and now is facing with successful results the so called, industry 4.0 challenge which is generating great interest about the crucial role of services in this strategy.

As always do the conference the broadening the research domain, the unit of analysis is not anymore the product or service but the well-being of both individuals and societies.

This conference is a forum for presentation and discussion of inter-disciplinary, innovative studies in service research. Scholars and practitioners of management, marketing, engineering, economics, sociology, geography, are invited to submit papers that explore and develop a multidisciplinary understanding of various service issues. Papers can be based on literature reviews, conceptual and empirical studies using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods.