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JOSM
31,1 Transformative service research,
service design, and social
entrepreneurship
24 An interdisciplinary framework advancing
Received 15 May 2019 wellbeing and social impact
Revised 30 August 2019
17 October 2019
Accepted 22 October 2019
Linda Alkire (née Nasr)
Department of Marketing, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, USA
Christine Mooney and Furkan A. Gur
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA
Sertan Kabadayi
Department of Marketing, Gabelli School of Business,
Fordham University, New York, New York, USA
Maija Renko
Driehaus College of Business, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA, and
Josina Vink
CTF – Service Research Center, Karlstads Universitet, Karlstad, Sweden;
Experio Lab, County Council of Värmland, Karlstad, Sweden and
Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an interdisciplinary framework bridging service design
and social entrepreneurship with transformative service research (TSR) to create greater synergetic effects to
advance wellbeing and drive social impact.
Design/methodology/approach – This research provides an interdisciplinary review and synthesis of
literature to establish a basis for a conceptual framework advancing human wellbeing and driving social impact.
Findings – The overarching framework created incorporates various concepts, methods and tools across the
three research domains. At the core of the framework is the ultimate goal of multilevel wellbeing and social
impact. The core is subsequently supported by established social entrepreneurship concepts and strategies:
prosocial motivation, hybrid identity, social bricolage, entrepreneurial thinking, community engagement,
business model design and innovative delivery. The implementation of these concepts could benefit from the
methods and tools used in service design, such as: design probes, service blueprints, appreciative inquiry,
contextual interviews, actor maps, sustainable business model canvas and service prototyping.
Practical implications – The paper uses the refugee crisis as an illustrative example of how the proposed
framework can be put into action by service organizations.
Originality/value – By bridging literature in TSR, service design and social entrepreneurship, this paper
provides service managers with a framework to guide scalable systemic solutions for service organizations
interested in advancing human wellbeing and driving social impact.
Keywords Wellbeing, Social entrepreneurship, Service organizations, Service design, Social impact,
Transformative service research
Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction
Journal of Service Management In today’s global world, major environmental, economic, political and social challenges are
Vol. 31 No. 1, 2020
pp. 24-50
abundant and have detrimental effects to the quality of life of many people. These global
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1757-5818
challenges include poverty, climate change, food insecurity, conflict and violence, as well as
DOI 10.1108/JOSM-05-2019-0139 education inequalities, to list a few. Globally, over 780m people live below the poverty line,
defined as less than $1.90 per day (United Nations, 2019). This extreme poverty results in Transformative
major food crises (e.g. 2018 Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis) and healthcare epidemics service research
(e.g. Africa’s Ebola epidemic of 2014–2016), leading to a systemic deterioration of our human
ecosystem (Machlis et al., 1997).
Aksoy et al. (2019) argue that the depth and scale of these global challenges cannot be
solved by government action alone. They emphasize the role and value of not-for-profit
enterprises as well as for-profit organizations seeking to make a social impact. As such, 25
service organizations are at a strategic position to drive social impact. Fundamentally,
services are at the center of human interactions as we live and work within service systems,
such as families, schools, enterprises and governments. These service systems affect our
interactions and experiences and are vital to the quality of our lives as well as our social
wellbeing (Machlis et al., 1997). While many have benefited from various service systems
(e.g. education, transportation, healthcare and justice) and associated service organizations
(e.g. universities, airlines, hospitals and law firms), others have been excluded or remain
unserved. We witness persistent service failures caused by organizational practices such as
systemic bias and unfair treatment, disrespect of human dignity (Kabadayi et al., 2019),
ignorance toward and/or abuse of customer vulnerability, marketplace discrimination, and
customer captivity, among others (Fisk et al., 2018). This paper builds on Aksoy et al. (2019)
argument that service organizations have a critical role to play in addressing service system
failures and advancing wellbeing and social impact.
Three complementary perspectives, including transformative service research (TSR),
service design and social entrepreneurship, have attempted to understand how to create and
sustain collective wellbeing and positive social impact. Within the service research field, TSR
emphasizes the role of services as an uplifting force in the wellbeing of actors. Anderson et al.
(2018) argue that the ability of a service to achieve TSR’s illustrative wellbeing outcomes
(i.e. access, literacy, decreasing disparity, health and happiness) is highly dependent on how
well the service is designed. Service design, a creative, human-centered and iterative approach
to service innovation (Blomkvist et al., 2010; Meroni and Sangiorgi, 2011), has direct influence
on actors’ individual and collective wellbeing (Vink et al., 2016). As an emerging field, service
design, supported by a host of methods and tools, has become more sophisticated, with its
ability to address difficult and increasingly complex problems (Fisk et al., 2018). Similarly,
social entrepreneurship encompasses the processes, activities and entities focused on the
simultaneous creation of social and economic value (Saebi et al., 2018; Short et al., 2009).
Concerned with how business acumen can be leveraged to address the social problems among
the marginalized, social entrepreneurship has garnered increased attention within the last
decade (Saebi et al., 2018), in large part due to the increasingly complex global challenges
confronting the world. Research on social entrepreneurship has explored a variety of topics,
including the development of social innovations (Bacq and Janssen, 2011), the context in
which they are developed (Austin et al., 2006), as well as the individuals pursuing social
impact (Miller et al., 2012).
Given their collective concern with improving human wellbeing and the complexity of
that problem, there is a need for research to bridge TSR, service design and social
entrepreneurship. While TSR is essential for understanding and addressing the identified
challenges in today’s world, service organization management can benefit from an
interdisciplinary approach (Brown et al., 2010). Such an approach would involve the
inclusion of intellectual resources from various academic disciplines and traditions in order
to develop a “collective understanding of an issue” (Brown et al., 2010, p. 6). In fact, these
research areas embrace distinct, yet complementary, perspectives; each has separately
contributed to our knowledge in relation to the pursuit of human wellbeing. These research
fields vary in maturity and focus, having traditionally focused on different sets of outcomes,
actors and techniques, therefore evolving to recognize different terminologies and
JOSM strategies. Additionally, there are limitations with each research area, including deficiencies
31,1 in: design tools and conceptual mechanisms in TSR; organizational understanding and
implementation processes in service design research; and understanding of the service
experience and co-creation of value in social entrepreneurship research. The scope and scale
of the problem of improving wellbeing requires such an interdisciplinary approach to
help scholars and practitioners alike maximize their social impact. By emphasizing the
26 service side of organizing and design for wellbeing, this paper points researchers in social
entrepreneurship to the centrality of service in impacting wellbeing and directs their
attention to inclusion of service design and delivery in enterprise models for social impact.
By introducing constructs and frameworks from social entrepreneurship and service design
to TSR researchers, this paper offers tools to apply in order to better understand how
services can achieve greater wellbeing and social impact.
Accordingly, this paper proposes incorporating TSR, service design and social
entrepreneurship in an interdisciplinary framework given their individual contributions to
our knowledge of the pursuit of human wellbeing. The interdisciplinary framework is
centered around the role of services in advancing wellbeing and social impact (TSR
inspiration), by using established managerial concepts (social entrepreneurship) aimed at
co-creating solutions through service design methods and tools. The aim of the framework,
therefore, is to inform service researchers and organizations about the various concepts,
methods and tools across these research domains that could be used to advance wellbeing
and drive social impact. As such, by bridging literatures in TSR, service design and social
entrepreneurship, this paper contributes to the literature by triggering a dialogue aimed at
catalyzing: the development of all three disciplines by using the logic from each to address
the limitations of the others, scalable systemic solutions for service organizations interested
in making a social impact and action-based managerial and societal implications.
The paper begins with a review and comparison of the extant research on TSR, service
design and social entrepreneurship. This is followed by a framework for guiding service
researchers and organizations in their efforts to advance human wellbeing and social
impact. The paper continues with a discussion of the refugee crisis as a case example of how
the proposed framework can be put into action by service organizations. It concludes with
suggestions of opportunities for interdisciplinary research and practice.

Literature review
Transformative service research
Based on the premise that services fundamentally affect human lives and wellbeing
(Anderson and Ostrom, 2015), TSR was introduced as service research that seeks to improve
wellbeing by uplifting individuals, collectives and ecosystems (Anderson et al., 2013; Ostrom
et al., 2010). Since we as humans are embedded in and surrounded by service systems (Fisk,
Anderson, Bowen, Gruber, Ostrom, Patrício, Reynoso and Sebastiani, 2016), the TSR
framework stresses the fundamental role of service and service systems in affecting our
wellbeing. It proposes that individual and societal wellbeing can be improved through the
interaction between service entities (e.g. service employees, service processes or offerings,
organizations or service sectors) and consumer entities (e.g. individuals, collectives and the
ecosystem) by affecting the wellbeing outcomes of both (Anderson et al., 2013). As such,
TSR uses tools and concepts from service research to address service social issues
(Gustafsson et al., 2015).
The distinguishing aspect of TSR from other service research is the outcomes that it
investigates and emphasizes. While traditional service research often includes outcome
measures, such as customer satisfaction, loyalty and financial outcomes, TSR focuses on
understanding the broader role services play in improving wellbeing-related outcomes like
health, literacy, access and happiness, among others (Rosenbaum et al., 2011). Furthermore,
TSR encourages researchers to explore critical issues, such as social justice, equality and Transformative
service inclusion (Fisk et al., 2018), through interdisciplinary research as these issues service research
necessitate an investigation of wellbeing from many different angles rather than through a
single perspective (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015).
Despite the quick success of TSR in attracting service academics and gaining traction in
service journals and conferences, TSR can be enriched through further practical
applications and exposure to fields beyond service research. First, most of the TSR explores 27
individual (micro-level) wellbeing, such as consumer wellbeing (e.g. Tang et al., 2016),
patient wellbeing (e.g. Yao et al., 2015) and employee wellbeing (Nasr et al., 2015). As argued
by Rosenbaum et al. (2011), “TSR needs to involve both individual and collective level issues
and include analyses of micro and macro outcomes of services” (p. 5). Second, existing TSR
work is largely conceptual in nature. For example, service inclusion (Fisk et al., 2018) and
financial wellbeing (Brüggen et al., 2017) concepts have been developed without empirical
examination. Therefore, while TSR-related work to date has laid a strong conceptual
foundation, there is a need for bridging the conceptual work done in TSR with more
practical applications. Similarly, even though the role of service researchers and
organizations in advancing wellbeing has been acknowledged (Fisk, Nasr, Gallan, Rayburn,
Ng, Sanjit and Sebastiani, 2016; Aksoy et al., 2019), limited application guidelines for service
organizations have been proposed. For this purpose, TSR could be enriched by perspectives
that provide mechanisms and tools to achieve its outcome.

Service design
Service design is a human-centered, creative and iterative approach to service innovation
(Blomkvist et al., 2010; Meroni and Sangiorgi, 2011). It was first introduced into the service
research field in Shostack’s (1982) pioneering work on service blueprinting – a practical tool
for identifying and addressing problems in service operations. In this early work, service
design was understood as a way of improving the monetary value and overall profitability
of services (Shostack, 1984). However, service design quickly evolved to focus on ways of
improving the customer experience, with attention to the backstage processes needed to
make this happen (Bitner et al., 2008).
Over the last decade, there has been a growing awareness that service design is not just
applicable to the design of services, as in intangible market offerings, but can be used as a
creative approach to the development of new forms of value co-creation more broadly
(Kimbell, 2011). A plethora of service design methods and tools have been developed to
enhance the quality of service experiences from the customer perspective, such as service
prototyping (Blomkvist and Holmlid, 2012), service walkthroughs (Blomkvist and Bode,
2012) and experience rooms (Edvardsson et al., 2010). There has also been growing
recognition of the need to better incorporate the context of service systems within service
design efforts (Stuart, 1998). Acknowledging complex service ecosystems in service design
has facilitated a shift toward balanced centricity that supports the multiplicity of needs of
both service provider and customer networks (Patrício, de Pinho, Teixeira and Fisk, 2018).
In this way, service design is increasingly viewed as “a means of harnessing latent
creativity and enabling social innovation in organizations and communities to address
entrenched issues and effect change for the social and public good” (Akama, 2015, p. 163).
There are many examples where service design is being put into action to catalyze social
change. In one example in Vancouver, Canada, InWithForward did in-depth ethnographic
research to understand the lives of adults with developmental disabilities. They then
partnered with a number of local non-profit organizations serving adults with
developmental disabilities in a co-design process to prototype new ways of working and
test out new offerings. One key result of the service design process was the development of a
new community learning platform, called Kudoz, that connects adults with developmental
JOSM disabilities to volunteer hosts through an online catalogue to facilitate novel learning
31,1 experiences that build capabilities and social connection.
However, as service design moves into the spaces of social change, there are calls for
service design to learn from established theories and principles regarding organizational
and social change to better support social transformation (Sangiorgi, 2011). There remain
concerns about service design’s lack of organizational understanding and inability to drive
28 implementation (Overkamp and Holmlid, 2016; Stuart, 1998); as such, to support social
change, close collaboration with other disciplines is needed (Hillgren et al., 2011). In this way,
combining service design with insights from social entrepreneurship can enhance the
applicability and promise of service organization for realizing social impact.

Social entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship refers to any innovative activity or process intending to create
social value either by creating new businesses or redirecting existing businesses (Saebi et al.,
2018; Zahra et al., 2009). This paper builds on the understanding that SE is “the process of
launching a hybrid organizational form that creates social value through market-based
methods” (Miller et al., 2012), where the creation of “new ventures or managing existing
organizations in an innovative manner” (Zahra et al., 2009, p. 519) delineates SE from other
forms of prosocial or change-driven activities. The practice and policy domains of social
entrepreneurship have been gaining recognition particularly in the last decade, after
Mohammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on microfinance in 2006.
In 1976, Yunus, a pioneer in microfinance, established one of the world’s best-known social
enterprises, the Grameen Bank. By allowing the poorest of the poor access to small loans,
the promise of microfinance is based on the belief that disadvantaged people will be able to
move upward on the social ladder through entrepreneurial pursuits (Yunus et al., 2010). This
example is a good illustration of why social enterprise has been gaining widespread support
across economic, governmental and social sectors. By addressing social issues, social
enterprise is more communal and less profit-focused than purely commercial business, yet
by attending to the financial sustainability of the operations, it is aligned with a capitalistic
world view of entrepreneurial organizing.
For social enterprises, socially responsible practices are a core part of the mission and
values (Certo and Miller, 2008). While the word “enterprise” typically refers to a start-up or a
small firm, the mature firms that arise from these socially responsible ventures typically
continue to have furthering social good at the core of their mission. Compared to traditional
organizational forms, such as for-profit service companies, or traditional non-profits in the
service sector, social enterprises demonstrate unique characteristics by borrowing features
from both traditional non-profit and for-profit businesses (Austin et al., 2006). Social
enterprises are often more aligned with markets and their needs than traditional non-profits as
they not only focus on social value but also on economic value and financial sustainability
through earned income. Social enterprises are characterized by a simultaneous focus on
pursuing economic and social value, seeking to benefit communities that are often not
considered feasible target segments for traditional enterprises due to their limited resources
(Di Domenico et al., 2010).
Compared to traditional, commercial companies, social impact creation is central to the
very existence of social enterprises. More often than not, this social impact is created to serve
one or more traditionally disadvantaged groups in society and is evident in the enterprise’s
mission-related impact (Dees, 1998). Faced with the failure of both markets and governments
to address the needs of the vulnerable and the disadvantaged, social entrepreneurs become
passionate about the needs of a particular group, or the characteristics of a particular problem,
and develop solutions for such groups and problems. As a result, most activities of social
entrepreneurs are directed toward offering services, products, and solutions to disadvantaged
segments of the population, such as people with low income, people with disabilities, those Transformative
experiencing long-term unemployment, discrimination, or homelessness, and others who are service research
socially excluded (Seelos and Mair, 2005). Offering solutions to these major social problems
with limited resources requires resourcefulness and innovativeness (Miller et al., 2012).
Tensions often emerge from attending to both social and financial performance,
making conflicts regarding resource allocation, organizational identity and stakeholder
accountability common (Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Conger et al., 2018; Moss et al., 2011; 29
Pache and Santos, 2013). Embedded in these streams of research is an understanding that
the goals of social enterprises are complex, but always social impact focused, and that
serving the chosen beneficiaries can be a highly challenging process, where elements of
service delivery can make or break the intended impact. Given the centrality of service in
the social enterprise domain, it is clear that research in this area can benefit from the
theoretical logic underlying TSR. Simultaneously, both social enterprise practitioners and
researchers need tools to understand the experiences of various key actors (beneficiaries,
customers and end users) to enable social impact. This is where methods and tools
from service design are highly salient. Table I includes a comparison of TSR, service
design and social entrepreneurship research, including the similarities and differences
among various dimensions.

An interdisciplinary framework
This section outlines an interdisciplinary framework merging key concepts from the TSR,
service design and social entrepreneurship literatures to develop a holistic framework for
understanding multilevel wellbeing (Ostrom et al., 2010) and social impact (Saebi et al.,
2018) (Figure 1). At the core of the framework is the ultimate goal that needs to be
achieved; referred to as multilevel wellbeing in TSR, including the wellbeing of individuals
and collectives (Ostrom et al., 2010), and social impact in social entrepreneurship
(Saebi et al., 2018). Social entrepreneurship research has studied important concepts that
organizations can focus on with the objective of creating social impact. Among
these concepts, some are especially promising as they are well-established and essential to
social entrepreneurship (Saebi et al., 2018) and could expand the practical application of
TSR. These concepts include: prosocial motivation, hybrid identity, social bricolage,
entrepreneurial thinking, community engagement, business model design and innovative
delivery. Furthermore, the implementation of these concepts in service organizations
would benefit from the practical methods and tools used in the service design approach.
Among these methods and tools, design probes, service blueprints, appreciative inquiry,
contextual interviews, actor maps, sustainable business model canvas and service
prototyping may prove to be especially useful for service researchers and organizations.
While many service design methods may be applicable to the pursuit of multilevel
wellbeing and social impact, these eight were chosen as exemplars due to their alignment
with the critical concepts from social entrepreneurship. In other words, concepts from the
social entrepreneurship literature can be bundled with service design methods and tools to
be implemented in service organizations to achieve the broad organizational objectives of
wellbeing and social impact. In the pursuit of these goals, service organizations are
operating within boundary conditions (Busse et al., 2017), or the elements within the
environment that can enable or hinder their progress, and, hence, describe the limits of
generalizability of our model (Whetten, 1989). The framework built in this paper accounts
for the conditions, including socio-cultural and technological factors, that may change or
limit the efficacy of our identified mechanisms to influence wellbeing and social impact
(Busse et al., 2017). The sections that follow delineate each of these important elements of
the interdisciplinary framework that bridges disciplines.
JOSM Transformative
31,1 service research Service design research Social entrepreneurship research

Focus Services Service innovation Social entrepreneurship

Service systems (Blomkvist et al., 2010) (Saebi et al., 2018)
(Rosenbaum et al., Customer experience Social issues (Mair et al., 2012)
2011) (Patrício et al., 2008) Social innovation
30 (Phillips et al., 2015)
Unit of analysis Service interactions Service design methods Social enterprise
Service encounters (Bitner et al., 2008) (McMullen, 2018)
(Anderson et al., 2013) Design capabilities (Karpen Social entrepreneur
et al., 2017) (Miller et al., 2012)
Primary Eudemonic and New service development Blended value (Emerson, 2003;
outcomes hedonic wellbeing (Clatworthy, 2011) Porter and Kramer, 2011)
(Anderson et al., 2013) Enhanced customer Creation of social value (Kroeger
Transformative value experience (Zomerdijk and and Weber, 2015)
(Blocker and Barrios, Voss, 2010) Social impact (Holt and
2015) Efficient backstage and Littlewood, 2015)
Relieving suffering frontstage operations Wellbeing (Bhuiyan and
(Nasr and Fisk, 2019) (Shostack, 1984) Ivlevs, 2019)
Service inclusion (Fisk Creative problem solving
et al., 2018) (Teixeira et al., 2017)
Multilevel wellbeing Novel forms of value co-
(Fisk et al., 2018) creation (Meroni and
Sangiorgi, 2011)
Target Individuals Organizations Marginalized, disadvantaged
beneficiaries Collectives Customers and vulnerable populations
Ecosystems Service designers and/or (Mair et al., 2012)
(Anderson et al., 2013) managers ( Junginger, 2015;
Patrício, de Pinho, Teixeira
and Fisk, 2018)
Research Call for focusing on Established practical methods Established concepts that
accomplishments measures beyond and tools used by service organizations can focus on with
profit and customer organizations to reach aspired the objective of creating social
satisfaction outcomes (Bitner et al., 2008) impact (Saebi et al., 2018)
(Rosenbaum et al., Co-design approaches
2011) with stakeholders
Identified as a service (Trischler et al., 2018)
research priority
(Ostrom et al., 2015)
Research Great potential for Expand understanding of Potential to expand knowledge of
opportunities practice and impact social change in service social entrepreneurship within
Growing organizations the service ecosystem
opportunities for Opportunities to examine Illumination of how social
empirical work implementation process ventures enhance and deliver
Meso- and macro-level Potential to expand social impact
empirical research theoretical framing in Opportunities to explore social
capabilities service design innovation and impact within a
Increasing need for service framework
managerial Explore stakeholders’ roles and
applications and experience in the service context
guidelines
Table I. Notes: Research objective: interdisciplinary framework centered around the role of services in
Comparison of TSR, advancing wellbeing and social impact (TSR inspiration), by using established managerial concepts
service design (social entrepreneurship) aimed at co-creating solutions through service design methods and tools.
research and social Research contribution: TSR becomes more practical and testable; service design research expands theoretical
entrepreneurship foundations and managerial relevance; social entrepreneurship broadens theoretical framing and
research incorporates tools to inform service experience
 Contextual
Transformative
cia
tive interviews Ac service research
pre iry ma tor
Ap inqu ps
Entrepreneurial
Com
thinking bu
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Su iness
ep e So lage age ity

s
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ts bri nt
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Bu el d
ide rid 31

sin esi
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Hy

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Multi-level wellbeing

Serv
Design

Inno very
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Prosocia
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Figure 1.
Interdisciplinary
Goal of Service Organizations
framework for
advancing multilevel
Social Enterprise Concepts wellbeing and
social impact
Exemplar Service Design Methods and Tools

Multilevel wellbeing and social impact

At the core of TSR is the goal of uplifting wellbeing through service. There are traditionally
two types of wellbeing, eudemonic and hedonic, encompassed within this overall goal.
Eudemonic wellbeing describes and emphasizes the realization of someone’s potential
(Ryff and Singer, 2008). Haybron (2008) labels its content as “human flourishing,” which
improves the quality of life. This definition is consistent with Sen’s (2005) conceptualization
of quality of life as the development of human capabilities and freedom. In the context of
TSR, eudemonic wellbeing is applied at the individual and collective levels, and includes
outcomes like access to services, literacy, better decision making, health, decreasing
health and wellbeing disparities, consumer involvement, harmony, power, respect, support
and social networks (Anderson et al., 2013; Kuppelwieser and Finsterwalder, 2016).
Hedonic wellbeing, on the other hand, relates to maintaining individual and collective
happiness and defines wellbeing in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance
(Ryan and Deci, 2001).
Recently, there has been a call for expansion of the scope of TSR outcomes beyond
wellbeing and for further delineation regarding the concept of wellbeing. Research suggests
that focusing on improving wellbeing is not enough as it assumes that some level of
wellbeing is already present, and that wellbeing can simply be enhanced through services
(Fisk, Anderson, Bowen, Gruber, Ostrom, Patrício, Reynoso and Sebastiani, 2016). However,
in reality, millions of people suffer and live in poverty and extreme conditions where they
lack access to the most vital services. Therefore, it has been suggested that instead of solely
focusing on “uplifting wellbeing,” there is a profound need to include the idea of “relieving
suffering” in TSR’s definition and scope of work (Nasr and Fisk, 2019). Similarly, since every
human is worthy of being served fairly and properly (Fisk, Anderson, Bowen, Gruber,
Ostrom, Patrício, Reynoso and Sebastiani, 2016), service inclusion has been proposed as
another topic that needs to be addressed by TSR as a mean to achieve multilevel wellbeing
(Fisk et al., 2018). Service inclusion is defined as an “egalitarian system that provides
customers (e.g. consumers, clients, patrons, citizens, patients, and guests) with fair access to
a service, fair treatment during a service and fair opportunity to exit a service” (p. 835).
With this definition, the authors position service inclusion as a global service system
standard for service relationships and interactions. Investigation of how to increase
service inclusion could help improve multilevel wellbeing and reduce the suffering of
individuals and communities. Therefore, in addition to relieving suffering, the three pillars
JOSM of service inclusion, i.e. enabling opportunity, offering choice and fostering happiness,
31,1 as identified by Fisk et al. (2018), broaden our understanding of multilevel wellbeing
within TSR.
While there has been extant research on positive and individual level wellbeing
outcomes, there is a paucity of research focused on unintended and collective-level outcomes
(Anderson and Ostrom, 2015). TSR research has predominantly focused on the individual
32 level while acknowledging the impact of service on the collective and community levels.
In conclusion, any effort that addresses human wellbeing, and seeks lasting social impact,
should focus not only on improving multilevel wellbeing, but also on reducing suffering
while being inclusive.
Similar to TSR, social entrepreneurship is concerned with societal wellbeing, or the social
value created for disadvantaged individuals by an organization’s actions (Martin and
Osberg, 2007). More specifically, social entrepreneurship focuses on how market-based
approaches can be used to address social problems and lead to positive social change
(Stephan et al., 2016). This positive social change results from unique solutions that are
simultaneously effective, efficient and sustainable (Phills et al., 2008). In other words, social
enterprises are concerned with utilizing efficient and effective approaches in the pursuit of
societal wellbeing in order to ensure both financial feasibility of the organization as well as
positive social impact for society. Though financial sustainability is a key component of
social enterprise, social entrepreneurship is centrally concerned with how enterprises
positively impact the individual and societal wellbeing of marginalized individuals.

Social entrepreneurship and service design

To help service organizations achieve multilevel wellbeing and social impact, this paper
focuses on identifying relevant concepts listed in a recent review on social entrepreneurship
(Saebi et al., 2018) with the most potential to contribute to enriching service research and
practice, including prosocial motivation, hybrid identity, social bricolage, entrepreneurial
thinking, community engagement, business model design and innovative delivery. These
concepts are then complemented by practical service design methods and tools, including
design probes, service blueprints, appreciative inquiry, contextual interviews, actor maps,
sustainable business model and service prototyping. While these concepts and methods are
not comprehensive, they are some of the most promising and relevant for the pursuit of the
overall aim for social organizations.
Prosocial motivation. The concept of prosocial motivation, or the desire to make a
positive impact on other people without personal gain (Grant, 2007), developed from
the need to understand why some individuals help others. Research suggests that the
motivation to act for the good of others is driven by both altruistic attributes (Batson and
Shaw, 1991), such as compassion (Miller et al., 2012) and empathy (Bacq and Alt, 2018), and
communal mechanisms, such as a sense of social worth (Grant and Gino, 2010). Individual
dispositions (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997) and orientations (Vos and van der Zee, 2011) are
related to the propensity to engage in prosocial behavior. Prosocial motivation is considered
an inherently social attribute that encompasses a person’s or organization’s interactions
with and perspectives about the intended beneficiaries, or the people who benefit from the
social good (Grant, 2007). Prosocial motivation has been linked to many outcomes, including
persistence (Grant, 2008), propensity to and perception of trust (Grant and Sumanth, 2009),
individual performance and productivity (Grant, 2008; Grant and Sumanth, 2009),
perspective taking, and citizenship behavior (Cardador and Wrzesniewski, 2015).
Research exploring prosocial motivation within entrepreneurship has tended to focus on
social venturing (see Branzei et al., 2018 for a review), given its central aim is to restore
wellbeing. Scholars suggest that compassion, a prosocial motivator (Miller et al., 2012), and
empathy are key drivers of social entrepreneurial intentions (Bacq and Alt, 2018). In some Transformative
cases, scholars have uncovered a paradoxical relationship between prosocial motives and service research
positive social impact including prosocial motivation leading to a decrease in “socio
emotional return” (McMullen and Bergman, 2017) and decreases in the probability of new
venture formation (Renko, 2013). This research suggests possible negative, or unintended,
consequences of prosocial motivation for social ventures.
Service design offers different ways of supporting prosocial motivation in individuals 33
and organizations. In particular, service design is recognized as a promising approach to
cultivating empathy and enhancing actors’ connection to the intended beneficiaries of a
service organization (New and Kimbell, 2013). There are a variety of service design methods
that can be employed to elicit empathy including: observation (Leonard and Rayport, 1997)
– where actors shadow others to better understand aspects to their daily life in context;
experience prototyping (Buchenau and Suri, 2000) – where actors gain a first-hand
understanding of existing or future experiences by engaging with representations of that
experience; design probes (Mattelmäki, 2006) – where actors self-document their personal
context and perceptions through diaries or photography; and role-playing games (Kaario
et al., 2009) – where actors act out different experiences, including the experiences of others.
These methods can help service organizations build an understanding of the experiences
and context of their beneficiaries. As there are risks associated with an over-emphasis on
empathy within service design, there is also recognition of the need to integrate lived
experience – the direct, first-hand perception of a relevant situation, condition or identity in
an everyday context – by involving beneficiaries directly in the service design process to
reduce assumptions and biased interpretations (Vink and Oertzen, 2018). Combining service
design methods that support the development of empathy and integration of lived
experience can help to cultivate the prosocial motivation necessary in social organizations
and mitigate some of the possible unintended consequences.
Hybrid identity. Social entrepreneurs pursue a blended value approach in that they
simultaneously focus on creating social and/or environmental good, while creating financial
value for the organization and its related actors. This dual approach demands the
employment of a hybrid model simultaneously engaging both positive social and/or
environmental impact and profit maximization (McMullen and Warnick, 2016). As a result,
hybrid organizations differ from traditional commercial enterprises or social sector
organizations, incorporating objectives and goals that reflect both social welfare and market
efficiency (Battilana and Lee, 2014). This shared value approach is interwoven in the
mission or purpose of the company, guiding all aspects of organizational decision making,
including setting priorities (Grimes et al., 2013).
The integration of social impact and profit maximization in the hybrid model introduces
unique challenges. For example, the assimilation of diverse and possibly conflicting
identities may create internal conflicts (Battilana and Dorado, 2010), as employees might be
prone to identify with either the social or commercial goals (Miller et al., 2012). Combining
market-driven and charity-driven aspects may also present external challenges, as the
hybrid structure may confuse external actors, thereby reducing organizational legitimacy
and financial support (Moss et al., 2018). Despite these challenges, there are some benefits to
the hybrid model, including the “creative tension” that arises from competing logics
(Battilana et al., 2015). Additionally, new organizational forms (e.g. Benefit Corporation and
B-Corp certification) have emerged that more effectively reflect the hybrid nature of social
enterprises (Conger et al., 2018).
Service design can be a driver to support the transformation of the logics of service
organizations. Such a transformation is often necessary when blending social/environmental
values and financial considerations. One popular service design method that can help to
JOSM unpack the implications and tensions of a hybrid identity is the service blueprint. Service
31,1 blueprinting involves mapping out both the customer journey and the back-end components
of a service (Shostack, 1982, 1984). This process of mapping out the current and/or future
customer experience can help to identify opportunities for bringing social values to life
through interactions with customers. Furthermore, the detailing of the backstage processes of
a service can help organizations to understand issues around the feasibility of a particular
34 service or approach. Involving stakeholders of a service organization in a participatory
approach to service blueprinting (Bitner et al., 2008) can create space for different actors, who
do not necessarily agree, to come together to reveal dilemmas and make them more tangible
(Hillgren et al., 2011). This approach visualizes some of the competing needs and values that
need to be designed for when dealing with a hybrid identity in service organizations. By
engaging with service design methods, such as the service blueprint, actors can gradually
work to change the language, symbols and practices associated with different organizational
logics (Kurtmollaiev et al., 2018). This process, for example, may allow a social enterprise
to create an improved service experience, as the organization can develop a cohesive
organizational identity while also leveraging the creative tension necessary to drive effective
social innovations.
Social bricolage. Resource management and utilization are at the center of any
organization’s success (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984). Bricolage or resourcefulness is a
central entrepreneurial trait as entrepreneurs almost always operate under extreme
uncertainty and limited resources (Baker and Nelson, 2005). Hence, successful entrepreneurs
are considered bricoleurs who excel in making do with whatever resources they have
(Welter et al., 2016). Social entrepreneurs especially need to be adept bricoleurs given that
they are tackling large (social) issues in difficult institutional environments (Desa, 2012) with
limited resources (Di Domenico et al., 2010).
While somewhat similar to its use in commercial entrepreneurship, bricolage should be
contextualized in social entrepreneurship given its unique characteristics. Most importantly,
while commercial entrepreneurs search for markets with opportunities and ample resources,
social entrepreneurs intentionally focus on markets and communities traditionally
characterized by resource limitations (Di Domenico et al., 2010). Thus, the key characteristics
of social bricoleurs involve making do with available resources, refusing to be limited by
resource constraints, improvising and innovating for the creation and utilization of resources,
as well as engaging and persuading stakeholders and other key actors of the community to
secure new resources (Di Domenico et al., 2010). For example, Dacin et al. (2010) refer to local
farmers involved in LocalFeed in Africa (a social enterprise focusing on providing high-quality
animal feed to increase the efficiency of their small land) as social bricoleurs as they utilize their
limited knowledge and resources to create social value (e.g. leveraging idiosyncratic, local
knowledge to identify new opportunities) (Zahra et al., 2009). Similarly, Fairtrasa brings
marginalized smallholder farmers into the global food supply chain by utilizing their local
knowledge and expertise.
Recognizing the need for resourcefulness in a variety of contexts, service design offers
creative ways of working with limited resources to achieve social purposes. In service design,
resource limitations become creative constraints that can inspire innovative solutions. A
number of service design methods are particularly honed to enable creativity and insight
development amid resource limitations, such as guerilla ethnography (e.g. going out and
connecting with people on the street), low fidelity prototyping (i.e. simulating function but not
the aesthetics of a solution) and bodystorming (i.e. acting as though a service would exist)
(Curedale, 2013). While service design is often associated with a problem-solving orientation, it
can also adopt an “appreciative inquiry” approach that focuses on recognizing and leveraging
the assets of an existing situation ( Junginger and Sangiorgi, 2009). By mapping the existing
resources, service design can support service organizations in developing contextual, Transformative
strength-based approaches to realize the social impact amid resource constraints. Using an service research
appreciative inquiry approach may increase the capacity for social bricolage, as it provides
systematic tools for a social entrepreneur to identify and leverage potential resources. As
social entrepreneurs become more comfortable as social bricoleurs, they may become more
effective at readily identifying potential resources and building on these local resources to
achieve the social mandate of their organization. 35
Entrepreneurial thinking/opportunity mindset. An entrepreneurial, or opportunity-seeking
mindset, is another critical resource leveraged by traditional entrepreneurs and social
entrepreneurs alike. An entrepreneurial mindset, or “a growth-oriented perspective through
which individuals promote flexibility, creativity, continuous innovation and renewal” (Ireland
et al., 2003, p. 968), allows individuals to engage in a flexible and self-regulating awareness
and understanding under conditions of dynamism and uncertainty (Haynie et al., 2010).
This flexible and dynamic thinking impacts the entrepreneurial decision-making process
(Shepherd et al., 2015), enabling individuals to engage in strategic entrepreneurial behavior
(e.g. identifying opportunities before full information is known, leveraging a flexible attitude
with regard to uncertainty and developing a comprehensive frame for entrepreneurial
decision making) (Ireland et al., 2003). Extant research reveals that entrepreneurial thinking is
positively linked to creative thinking (Davis et al., 2016) and entrepreneurial intentions
(Pfeifer et al., 2016).
Aligned with the entrepreneurial or opportunity mindset, service design offers an
iterative and creative approach that supports the growth and evolution of actors’
mindsets. In particular, service design methods contribute to perspective change by
helping actors tap into their senses and challenge their own assumptions (Wetter-Edman
et al., 2018). In doing so, service design can help to expose actors’ mental models, their
assumptions about how a system works, help actors understand other possible mental
models and embody alternative mental models to support a process of ongoing adaptation
(Vink et al., 2019). Service design tools can act as instruments of inquiry that guide and
open up actors’ perspective of particular problems and solutions (Dalsgaard, 2017). They
can help to facilitate a process of reflecting on and in action and engaging in a
conversation with a particular situation of interest (Schön, 1983). For example, by doing a
contextual interview of a beneficiary, a social entrepreneur may challenge some of the
initial assumptions they had about a particular situation and recognize their own blind
spots, enabling them to adopt a more flexible mindset with regard to possible solutions
and entrepreneurial options.
Community engagement. Service ecosystems is a growing area in service management
research (e.g. Barile et al., 2016; Jonas et al., 2018), but more research is needed to understand
the community structure of service ecosystems. Accordingly, another key area where social
entrepreneurship can provide insights for the service organization involves community
engagement in the pursuit of creating social value. Communities are “a complex web of
relationships between a set of individuals who share values, norms, meanings, history, and
identity” separated by “their culture, groups, and places” (Shepherd and Patzelt, 2011, p. 139).
Social entrepreneurship is a key approach for building, rebuilding, improving and
growing social communities (Thompson and Alvy, 2000). Moreover, social communities in
an ecosystem are central to a social enterprise’s success as the community can often serve as
a key means to secure necessary resources (Di Domenico et al., 2010). In fact, community
participation is considered to be key for successful social enterprises (Zahra et al., 2009).
Accordingly, social enterprises create mechanisms through which the entire community is
engaged in identifying often neglected social issues in their own community as well as
co-creating and implementing solutions to these problems (Santos, 2012).
JOSM The importance of community engagement is exemplified by a non-governmental social
31,1 enterprise called Gram Vikas, focusing on tackling major social issues in rural India and
Africa. Gram Vikas trains villagers in India on various simple infrastructure mechanisms
for sanitation. Villagers, in turn, commit to sanitation by providing the necessary labor as
well as providing necessary funds for the maintenance and long-term sustainability of this
sanitation system. In doing so, the entire community is engaged in creating, implementing
36 and assuring the sustainability of a solution for a major problem of their community
(Santos, 2012).
Moreover, social entrepreneurship research suggests a wide use of partnerships and
collaborations with for-profit corporations (Di Domenico et al., 2009), governments and other
institutions (Sud et al., 2009). For instance, Ansari et al. (2012) develop a more socially
embedded and community-focused approach to the base of the pyramid, one that is
co-created within the community with the support of various actors who eventually affect
and shape communities. Thus, community orientation and mobilization can be considered
as further evidence for the social entrepreneurs’ role as bricoleurs.
Service design can be employed as an approach to building engagement among
community actors. First, service design involves methods for supporting the identification
of diverse actors and their relations within a service ecosystem. This can be done through
the creation of an actor network map that visually represents the network of actors
associated with a service (Patrício, de Pinho, Teixeira and Fisk, 2018; Patrício, Gustafsson
and Fisk, 2018). Furthermore, at the heart of service design is the participatory approach of
co-design that involves partnering with diverse actors within the design process (Steen et al.,
2011). Co-design can involve a one-time co-creation workshop with actors or collective
creativity across the whole design process (Sanders and Stappers, 2008). Involving
community actors through co-design has documented benefits including enhancing the
benefit of beneficiaries and increasing the novelty of developed concepts (Trischler et al.,
2018). Service design research also suggests a number of benefits from co-design related to
wellbeing for end beneficiaries, including enhanced satisfaction and empowerment, and for
service organizations, including greater levels of creativity among staff and better
relationships (Steen et al., 2011; Vink et al., 2016).
Business model design. Business models are a central construct to understanding how
organizations, such as social enterprises and service organizations, can add value to society
by creating significant and sustainable change. The example of the Grameen Bank and
microfinance, mentioned earlier, shows how a new business model (microlending) can
profoundly impact the poor microentrepreneurs’ lives. By offering loans to the previously
“unbankable poor,” microlending was organized differently from traditional banking with
its focus on women borrowers, borrowing to groups instead of individuals and making
loans that were a fraction of the size of traditional bank loans (Yunus et al., 2010). As such,
the Grameen Bank and other microfinance organizations illustrate the definition of a
business model as “the content, structure, and governance of transactions designed so as to
create value through the exploitation of business opportunities” (Amit and Zott, 2001,
p. 511), and, increasingly, through the exploitation of opportunities to create social value
(Martí, 2018; Seelos and Mair, 2005). More generally, the business model is a “system that is
made up of components, linkages between the components, and dynamics” (Afuah and
Tucci, 2000, p. 4), where the end result is the creation of value for the customer (Chesbrough
and Rosenbloom, 2002).
Not surprisingly, therefore, business models have become an important topic of study for
both entrepreneurship and service design scholars, who are generally interested in value
creation as an outcome of business operations (Demil et al., 2015; Stickdorn et al., 2018;
Prendeville and Bocken, 2017). Service design can leverage different approaches to
visualizing business models that integrate environmental and social impacts within the Transformative
business model canvas, such as the sustainable business model (e.g. Upward and Jones, service research
2016). Such alternative approaches can be used in a service design process to work through
a service organization’s business model while incorporating multilevel wellbeing as
a key goal.
In social entrepreneurship, firms straddle the space between government and
private sector to find new ways to create societal wealth (e.g. Martí, 2018; MacMillan and 37
Thompson, 2013). In this process, the buy-in from key actors, such as customers and
beneficiaries, is essential (MacMillan and Thompson, 2013), and business models take key
actors into account by referring to the customer value proposition (e.g. Chesbrough and
Rosenbloom, 2002) or by including customers and beneficiaries as actors in the firm’s value
creation system (e.g. Amit and Zott, 2001).
Business model design offers a link between service design, TSR and social
entrepreneurship, in that it brings to light the common, underlying assumption in each area:
customers and beneficiaries are not passive recipients, and are more than consumers of firms’
products and services (Martí, 2018; Seelos and Mair, 2005; Fisk et al., 2018; Patrício, de Pinho,
Teixeira and Fisk, 2018; Patrício, Gustafsson and Fisk, 2018). Instead, they are increasingly
involved in the generation and delivery of the value – be it social or financial – that is co-created
with them (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). In microfinance, for example, the
microentrepreneurs’ actions and insight of local markets are essential for their ability to use
the funds they are provided with to further the success and long-term sustainability of their
enterprises, leading to poverty reduction. While entrepreneurship research has often focused on
the emergence and cognitive origins of new business models (e.g. Martins et al., 2015), having
the customer as a central anchor for these models aligns with the main tenet of the design
literature (Kelley et al., 2001; Zott and Amit, 2015). Students of both service design and social
entrepreneurship often use the same visual tools, such as the business model canvas, to
understand the interconnections in the model that creates value for the customer and/or social
value (e.g. Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).
Social enterprises employ a variety of business models to deliver social value, including:
engaging in open hiring – directly employing, or training for employment, those coming
from disadvantages backgrounds, such as the homeless or the formerly incarcerated (Bloom
and Chatterji, 2009); facilitating market access to products or services for those coming from
disadvantaged backgrounds (Mair and Marti, 2009); providing access to products or
services otherwise unavailable to disadvantaged groups (Yunus et al., 2010); and adopting a
donation model, such as the buy-one-give-one model popularized by Tom’s Shoes (Binkley,
2010) to support social impact. For example, fair trade organizations aim to provide living
wages to farmers in developing nations, while also facilitating the distribution of their
products to markets in the western world. These are just some examples of the commonly
used social enterprise business models, and numerous others exist and are being developed
in the field (Renko and Freeman, 2019). Exploration of sustainable business models can help
enhance social responsibility while maintaining or improving financial stability. The
process of business modeling provides a platform to engage with the appropriate
beneficiaries and other stakeholders to collectively consider how they may be integrated
into the business model. By quickly sketching out different iterations of business models,
social entrepreneurs can evaluate alternatives and more quickly develop innovative and
effective business models to achieve social good.
Innovative delivery. Developing novel solutions for social problems and delivering
them in innovative ways is at the heart of social entrepreneurship and is a key differentiator
of social enterprises from traditional non-profits as their innovativeness helps them
create sustainable businesses in the long term (Peredo and McLean, 2006; Santos, 2012).
JOSM Accordingly, while there are many definitions of social entrepreneurship, with great
31,1 diversity among them, innovative solutions or innovative delivery of these solutions have
been a shared feature for the majority of these definitions (Dacin et al., 2010; Saebi et al.,
2018; Zahra et al., 2009).
An example of an innovative solution to a social problem is BioLite (a socially focused
outdoor and off-grid energy company) which developed an innovative device that utilizes
38 thermoelectric technology to make wood-burning stoves cleaner and safer in addition to the
extra capabilities, such as a charger for cell phones or other accessories (Muralidharan et al.,
2015). The key here is that the innovation in social entrepreneurship is not only about the
creation of innovative solutions for social problems, but also is about the innovative delivery
of these solutions (Belinda and Chu, 2013). Working with microfinance institutions, for
example, Kiva (a San Francisco based non-profit focusing on creating financing opportunities
for underserved communities) created a new pipeline of funding for people who are
marginalized. Through their online platform, Kiva provides individuals the opportunity to
lend money, as little as $25, directly to poor entrepreneurs. This innovative delivery method
provides these entrepreneurs improved and more direct access to capital.
To support the development of innovative solutions, service design offers a host of
approaches that service researchers and organizations can employ. One of the most
important approaches in service design to support iteration around innovative solutions
is service prototyping (Blomkvist and Holmlid, 2010). Service prototypes create a
representation of a future state to understand how an existing situation can be transformed
into a new one (Blomkvist, 2012). One way of prototyping involves doing service
walkthroughs where actors move through the different touchpoints of a service, often using
roleplay to better understand the general experience holistically and make changes
(Blomkvist et al., 2012). By representing the design of a service before the final solution
exists and testing it out to appreciate the experience of the beneficiary, prototyping can help
to support the process of solution development and refinement (Buchenau and Suri, 2000).
Prototyping also allows social entrepreneurs to experiment with multiple potential solutions
to better understand what is most effective within a given context before making significant
investments.

Boundary conditions
This paper outlines a number of ideas on how to combine social enterprise and service
design elements in pursuit of the wellbeing goals of TSR. However, not all of these ideas will
work equally well in every service context; boundary conditions are also important
considerations when exploring human wellbeing. This section elaborates on some key
boundary conditions of the presented theoretical ideas (Whetten, 1989), addressing the issue
of generalizability of the model across contexts (Busse et al., 2017). For the framework
outlined above, the role of socio-cultural and technological environments can be paramount
as they may constrain service organizations from enacting the social enterprise and service
design components of the framework.
A salient condition for whether service organizations can feasibly pursue wellbeing goals,
in the first place, is presented by their socio-cultural environment: the beliefs, customs,
practices and behaviors of a society in which the organization operates (Thornton et al., 2011).
As an example, while access to education is widely acknowledged as a valuable wellbeing
goal, the socio-cultural context of a service organization may limit the extent to which
education can be provided to certain demographic groups, such as women. Relatedly,
socio-cultural norms, including the social networks and cultural beliefs of the key
stakeholders, such as founders, employees and beneficiaries (Thornton et al., 2011), likely
influence the creation and development of service organizations. Beliefs around individualism,
power distance, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1983) influence Transformative
entrepreneurial activity, such that these differences may influence elements important in service research
social enterprising, including prosocial motivation (e.g. views on volunteerism), the
entrepreneurial mindset (e.g. valuing a growth mindset) and community engagement
(e.g. views around the role of community in solving social problems). Furthermore, some
service design methods and tools are reflective of particular socio-cultural contexts and may
not be aligned with others. Human interaction, for example, is reflective of its cultural context, 39
and cultural norms (e.g. gender roles and responsibilities) may limit the extent to which
service design methods from a western culture (e.g. experience prototyping and role-playing
games) can be effectively applied in the context of certain developing nations.
Similarly, technological elements, including the skills, methods, systems and equipment
within the business environment, are likely to influence a service organization’s capacity to
create social impact and multilevel wellbeing. The creativity that drives social bricolage,
business model development and innovative delivery, for example, may be enhanced or
hindered by key elements in the technological environment, such as the skill level of the
workforce, technological advances in equipment and everyday availability of technological
solutions for consumers. While many of the service design elements in the interdisciplinary
framework do not require sophisticated technology to be used, their adoption can certainly
be aided by the advancements in technological tools and physical materials (e.g. digital tools
for prototyping). Furthermore, ongoing technological change has a direct influence on the
evolving context of individuals and service organizations, often dramatically altering
interactions. For example, business models that bring together beneficiaries from the
developing world and resource providers from more developed countries (e.g. crowdfunded
microfinance) have been made possible because of the ubiquitous availability of internet
around the globe.

Applications of an interdisciplinary framework

To illustrate the possible integration of these components from the interdisciplinary
framework, below we highlight an illustrative case that demonstrates how such a
framework could be applied to support service organizations in their pursuit of multilevel
wellbeing and social impact within a particular context.

A case study: the refugee crisis

Globally, more than 25m refugees lack adequate access to basic services like healthcare and
education (UNHCR, 2019). Adopting a TSR lens, Nasr and Fisk (2019) suggest that services
play a paramount role in reducing the suffering of refugees. Similarly, Aksoy et al. (2019)
emphasize the role of for-profit service organizations in addressing these global challenges.
A social entrepreneurship approach to the refugee issues would emphasize both the social
impact of such interventions (e.g. how to successfully integrate refugees and provide
adequate access) as well as the sustainability of the solutions. The framework developed in
this paper suggests various social entrepreneurship concepts that could be adopted by
service organizations to support the wellbeing of refugees and their communities.
Prosocial motivation, for example, needs to be present across the service organization to
support this social pursuit. Efforts to enhance prosocial motivation can be supported by
engaging organizational actors in using service design methods, such as observation,
experience prototyping and role-playing games, that aim at creating empathy. More
specifically, co-design with refugees could help employees to have a better understanding of
the refugees’ daily experiences and may subsequently lead to prosocial motivation across
the organization. Another concept from social entrepreneurship that service organizations
can adopt is building a community orientation and engagement in their efforts to help
refugees. Service organizations can utilize an actor network map, developed within a
JOSM participatory service design process, that visually represents all the different actors
31,1 (e.g. community members, NGOs and government agencies) that share the same goal of
helping refugees, to identify potential partners and collaborators.
Similarly, developing a hybrid identity focused simultaneously on social and economic
value could facilitate more financially sustainable service organizations as they could
leverage a broader array of funding opportunities in order to create maximum impact for
40 addressing this major problem. Specifically, in addition to relying exclusively on
donations, organizations focusing on addressing this social problem could also benefit
from revenues generated based on selling products or services crafted by refugees or by
pursuing a one-for-one business model similar to Tom’s Shoes, in which they donate an
item desperately needed by refugees when they sell their product or service at a premium
price to other customers.
If an organization was to sell products or services crafted specifically by refugees with
barriers to employment, the service blueprint could help to map out the key backstage
processes of refugees and other intermediaries as well as the journey of the customers. By
mapping out the backstage steps of refugees, the organization could build their understanding
of the conditions and opportunities for supporting dignified work and ongoing skill
development. Furthermore, by mapping the customer experience, the organization can better
understand how best to communicate their social mission to the customers and increase
demand. This blueprinting process could help organizations grapple with the implications
of developing a hybrid identity that both serves the intended beneficiaries and the
organizational staff.
Given the complexity of the problem, service organizations would immensely benefit
from adopting an opportunity mindset to dig deep into the underlying root causes of
the refugee crisis in different contexts. For example, a root cause assessment could be
facilitated by the commonly used approach of the five whys – where actors repeatedly
question the underlying reasons for why something exists (Stickdorn and Schneider,
2011). In the context of the refugee crisis, this may lead to realizations about the
interconnectedness of the refugee crisis with issues of war or climate change. Through
this knowledge, an organization might decide to strategically contribute to reducing
migration pressure by adopting a purchasing policy that restricts doing business with
companies that make or sell weapons for war and find ways to reduce their carbon
emissions or eliminate waste. While these issues are not always immediately connected to
the refugee crisis, service design methods can help to analyze and unpack complex and
interconnected issues to inform an organization’s strategy more broadly and ensure
alignment with its social mission.
As highlighted by this illustrative example, adopting an interdisciplinary framework can
have important implications for service research. As previously noted, there is a need for
more empirical TSR research involving the individual- and collective-level issues, including
the outcomes of services provided. As suggested by this proposed framework, TSR
researchers might consider constructs from service design and social entrepreneurship, to
help inform wellbeing among a wider breadth of individuals, including beneficiaries.
Furthermore, these established constructs could inform empirical testing and
implementation of the conceptual frameworks developed by TSR. Similarly, service
design and social entrepreneurship researchers may find the framework useful in
conceptualizing wellbeing at multiple levels, including for communities and nations. For
service design researchers, this framework can help expand the discipline’s theoretical
foundations, including its knowledge of organizational and social change. Given the limited
understanding of service delivery, co-creation and service experience in social
entrepreneurship research, the proposed framework provides a strong conceptual basis
from TSR and essential tools from service design to inform scholars about the service
context and its role in social impact and wellbeing. Bridging process elements of design and Transformative
social impact constructs with TSR outcome metrics, such as financial wellbeing (Brüggen service research
et al., 2017) and service inclusion (Fisk et al., 2018), provides a more holistic view of service
research outcomes and potential for practical application. We, therefore, encourage
researchers to apply an interdisciplinary approach, such as the one proposed here, when
exploring and examining wellbeing.
41
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper is to build an interdisciplinary framework that draws from TSR,
service design and social entrepreneurship literatures to create greater synergetic effects for
advancing wellbeing and driving social impact. This framework combines the underlying
goals of TSR with social enterprise concepts and exemplary service design methods
relevant for operationalizing these goals. We also outline critical boundary conditions within
the environment that may influence the application of this framework in different contexts.
To contextualize the framework, the paper continues with an illustrative example of its
application related to the refugee crisis, as well as suggestions for future applications within
the research fields. As such, this framework contributes to all three research traditions,
including helping TSR become more practical and testable, enabling service design to
become more socially oriented and theoretically grounded, and infusing social
entrepreneurship with a service mindset. In doing so, this paper contributes to TSR by
advancing the discussion on how to operationalize the pursuit of multilevel wellbeing
and social impact.
Furthermore, this paper builds a foundation for ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue
around the shared goals of multilevel wellbeing and social impact. There is a need for a
continued conversation across disciplinary boundaries so that service research can be
informed and enhanced by other established research and traditions. Service scholars are
encouraged to continue engaging with other disciplines, including social innovation (e.g.
Aksoy et al., 2019), humanistic management (e.g. Kabadayi et al., 2019), social marketing
(e.g. Russell-Bennett et al., 2019), corporate social responsibility (e.g. Losada-Otálora and
Alkire, 2019), public policy and sociology, to address and solve the global challenges in an
efficient and effective way. In addition, researchers should consider the value of
collaboration across research and practice. The majority of the global problems are being
addressed by NGOs and social enterprises that are working hard to help millions of people
around the world. Unfortunately, researchers and academics are far from having a similar
impact. As such, academics are urged to partner with organizations to pursue social
impact through research and practice.

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Corresponding author
Linda Alkire (née Nasr) can be contacted at: linda.alkire@txstate.edu

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