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Service Science (MA) - 040.193

«Studienprogrammleitung Wirtschaftswissenschaften»

«Fachbereich Electronic Business»

2 hours, 4,0 ECTS

Prüfungsimmanente Lehrveranstaltung

Teaching Language: English

Registration online via «Univis»

max. 50 participants

E-Mail chris.bauer@univie.ac.at

Service Science (MA) - 040.193

• Time & Place

• Aims, contents and method of the course

• Assessment

• Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

• Examination topics

• Further readings

Time & Place

Regular attendance is required!

First unit: Wed, 05.10.2016 13:15, Hörsaal 12, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 2nd level

units weekly Wed, 13:15 - 14:45, Hörsaal 12, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 2nd level

Aims, contents and method of the course

The term information technologies (IT) is obviously most likely associated with the IT sector, software engineers, and robots. However, there are many markets for example the service sector that rely particularly on IT. In-deed, in many instances, the entire process of offering, selling, and consuming a service takes place online. In particular, the remarkable growth of the service sector has come to dominate business activity in most advanced economies over the last decades. Making up a significant part of the world economy, the service sector is a rapidly evolving field that is relied on to dictate the public's satisfaction and success in various areas of everyday life, from banking and communications to education and healthcare. What is more, there is the promising opportunity to innovate in services, to realize the business and societal value from knowledge about service, to research, develop, and deliver new information services and business services.

Services Science is the interdisciplinary application of science, engineering, and management for the purpose of improving services. Services Science also contributes to systematic innovation and improved productivity, and is the guiding force for the improvement of services through improved predictability in the productivity, quality, performance, compliance, development, reusability of knowledge, and operational innovation in services.

As an umbrella term for services over the Internet, e-services include electronic business transactions for handling online orders, application hosting by Application Service Providers (ASPs) and any processing capability that is obtainable on the Web. Using this e-services concept, any application program is a potential e-service, and Internet service providers (ISPs) as well as other companies are logical distributors or access points for such services.

Despite different definitions of the e-service concept, it can be argued that they all agree about the role of tech-nology in facilitating the delivery of services. And, the Internet is the main channel of e-service delivery. And as such online services are ubiquitous in everyday life, these are also important for the entire society.

The objective of this course on Service Science is to provide an insight into the concept of e-services, their delivery channels and platforms, as well as management and engineering issues.

The course will cover topics such as the nature of services, the need for interdisciplinary approaches to services innovation, and the technology and tools needed to provide services innovation.

After attending this course, students are able to:

understand and critique the ways in which researchers and practitioners are defining services and service science;
articulate the motivation behind the study of service science and relate their own experiences to the study of it;
apply theories that are emerging in the area of service science and identify current limitations in applying those theories;
understand the importance of the different e-services alongside a business process, and the interrelations of those;
understand the characteristics of e-services, web services, IT services and virtual services;
understand the challenges and benefits of SOA from a business and a technological perspective.

A particular emphasis will be put on current practices and systems as well on future developments. Students will be able to discuss and reason about the strategic importance of Service Science.

Assessment

Performance will be evaluated according to following criteria:

Regular attendance is a prerequisite for passing the course.
Written case elaboration (35%)
Case presentation in class (25%)
Final written exam (40%)

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

The following grading system is used:

87.5% - 100% = Sehr gut (1)

75% - 87% = Gut (2)

62.5% - 74.5% = Befriedigend (3)

50% - 62% = Genügend (4)

Below 50% = Nicht Genügend (5)

If the prerequisite of >= 50% (according to above grading system) is fulfilled, distinguished participation and commitment in class and on the learning platform (discussion) is positively rewarded by pushing the respective student to the next grade level.

Examination topics

The lecture slides serve as key learning material as well as articles and background material on current issues con-cerning corporate IT. Material will be available on the course platform.

A major part of this course distinguishes the conceptions e-services, web services, IT services, and virtual services. In this context, the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is introduced. SOA is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. Web services make functional building blocks accessible over standard Internet protocols, which are independent of platforms and programming languages. Thereby, these services can represent either new applications or just wrappers around existing systems to make them network-enabled. From a business perspective, this course discusses SOAs requirements, benefits and challenges. Simultaneously, the basic SOA protocols are presented, in order to provide students an overview of the technical issues.

The course is divided of four parts:

Part 1: This part focuses on introducing a comprehensive set of definitions of service and service science. It includes materials that provide early definitions and thoughts on services. This survey of services is meant to provide some context around the burgeoning study of services and impact on modern economies.

Part 2: This part of the course will engage with topics relevant to the question, What are e-services?. First, e services will be presented from a theoretical perspective. Then, the requirements for information and communi-cation technologies (ICT) will be discussed.

Part 3: This part of the course introduces information systems that support the central e-services along a business process. We thereby distinguish between access systems as well as support systems in the front and the back office, including, for instance, agent based systems, workflow management systems, workgroup support systems, etc.

Part 4: The third part of this course first discusses the characteristics of e-services, web services, IT services and virtual services. Then the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is introduced. SOA is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These interopera-ble services are often referred to as e-services; in most cases, though, we can speak of web services. Web services make functional building blocks accessible over standard Internet protocols, which are independent of platforms and programming languages. Thereby, these services can represent either new applications or just wrappers around existing systems to make them network-enabled. From a business perspective, this course dis-cusses SOAs requirements, benefits and challenges. Simultaneously, the basic SOA protocols are presented, in order to provide students a good overview of the technical issues.