This document discusses developing a conceptual framework for understanding services as dynamic systems. It proposes moving beyond views of services as products, processes, or functions. Inspired by phenomenology, process philosophy, and holism, the framework defines services as emergent phenomena from coordinating heterogeneous entities. Services are seen as arrangements of autonomous objects that exist through relationships and can change shapes through resource conversions. A new "servicial arrangement" model is proposed using simplicial complexes and hypergraphs to capture the multidimensionality and relationships between elements in a service system.

1. Philosophical fundations for a Services Systems
Approach
Paris – June 2012, 9th
Florie Bugeaud
Extracted from PhD thesis (defended in July 2011):
« iSamsara : for a Services Systems Engineering thanks to a Mereological
and Hypergraph approach »

2. MAIN ISSUES

3. Initial topic :
Creation of a business processes repository for business customers in the service sector.
Context :
« Opportunities research » step within a telecom operator design process : « innovators » try to
imagine and conceive adapted solutions for customers (case studies : diabetics telemonitoring,
videoconf. in a family)
(Bugeaud, 2011)

4. Main issues for the telecom operator:
Better understanding of the service situations that are experienced by customers
Maximizing the number of ideas / opportunities
Reducing the risks of a non-market adjustment
Positioning themselves in relation to the Services Science
Addressed problems and proposed solutions:
Complexity of the notion of « service » (= scientific lock)
Redefinition and formalization of the concept of service
Lack of understanding between the various actors of the innovation process and belated
interest for the customer experience (= operational lock)
Creation of a methodological framework for the opportunities research step
Difficult understanding of a « virtual reality » (services situations as they are experienced by
customers, in various dimensions: economic, cognitive, emotional, technologic, material etc.)

5. An overused and not well positioned concept:
Product Process
Functionality
Sector Service
Collaboration
Relation
Innovation
Activity

6. A simplified definition based on the customers’ role:
(Bun, 2008)

7. An « self-centered » vision within enterprises:

8. Towards a Services Engineering problematic at an abstract level and relational
perspective:
- (re) specification of the service?
- model to account for its heterogeneity and dynamicity?
- methods and tools to support the actors’ cooperation and creativity?
Re-conceptualization of the service, modeling and simulation to promote
cooperation and creativity upstream of the services design process of a
telecom operator

9. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

10. Observation and locks:
Service as a social relation, as a set of characteristics, as
(Gadrey, 2003)
a good, as a functionality, etc.
(Bugeaud, 2011)
Polysemy, complexity, various kinds of questioning, little recognition of use/usage, structured driving
of the innovation, difficult cooperation, few working environments ...
Even if perspectives are differents, we always define the service through its contents / its substance
without considering its dynamic nature, its various interactions…

11. Emergence of the notion of « service system » - SSME :
« a value-coproduction configuration of
people, technology, other internal and external service systems,
and shared information »
(Spohrer et al., 2007)
Systemic view: neither a commodity nor a functionality
Key characteristics: heterogeneity, dynamicity and value creation
Positioning:
“Intermediary object" (Vinck) to build the service and support the actors’ coordination
“Operational object" to describe the services’ interactions and underlying transactions, and to consider
the implementation of e-services
Questions: How to represent it? Calculate it? Simulate it?

12. Focus of the notion of « service relation » :
Particular form of the producer-consumer relation (Bensahel,et al., 2001)
New mode of coordination between actors / agents :
Generalization as the predominant social relation
Confusion of the commercial, social, public/private areas
Key component of the definition and design of products / services
Birth of dynamic and performative phenomenon:
Relation of circulation
DYNAMIC
Distributed activity
Sensory experience
Adapté de (Tixier, 2001)

13. Back to the minimal service phenomenology:
Awareness that there is a lack / a need
Separation of the client / user and a "piece" of himself
Request for help and getting in touch with a supplier
Transfer of the "object to fix 'the client to the supplier
Application of skills by the supplier and co-production with the customer
Transformation of the “service object" and quasi-simultaneous consumption
Reappropriation by the customer

14. PHILOSOPHICAL
FOUNDATIONS

15. Multidisciplinary background:
Phenomenology (Hegel, Husserl, etc.) :
• Perception of the objects / of the reality as heterogeneous phenomena
• Primacy of the human activity and experience rather than the substance
• Importance of relations of dependency and relation of fundation

16. Multidisciplinary background:
Dynamic structuralism (Piaget, Greimas, etc.) :
• Definition of the structure as a dynamic system / a system of transformations
(entity with internal dependences)
• Rules on the composition, association, dissociation, transformation
• Characteristics of: totality, transformations et auto-régulation

17. Multidisciplinary background:
Process philosophy (Whitehead, Rescher, etc.) :
• Opposition to the traditional paradigm of the substance
• Perception of the reality and the human experience as a set of movements /
events / developments and their alternatives
• Horizontally interconnected processes and vertically composed of micro-
processes

18. Multidisciplinary background:
Holism (Husserl, Whitehead, Leśniewski) :
• Definition of the theory of the collective class instead of distributive class
• Perception of the reality as clusters / assemblages / heaps of micro elements
• Definition of the mereological sum and product (as well as key operations)
• Sometimes combined with the “topology” (Varzi, Casati) with the notions of
neighborhood and frontiers/borders

19. Multidisciplinary background...
Phenomenology
Dynamic structuralism
Process philosophy
Holism
...for a new definition of the concept of service:
Dynamic phenomenon emerging from the coordination or linking of heterogeneous entities
Agencement / arrangement of autonomous objects which existence is conditioned by the alliances
or relationships they form between them, by constantly changing their shape during chains of
possible “products-resources conversions”

20. Implications :
objects / things categories + transcendental / a priori logic (Aristote, Kant)
flow / process that are nested and interconnected + immanent logic
semantic structuralism
dynamic structuralism (Petitot, 1999)
hierarchies / structured and homogeneous totalities
relational “part-whole”, connectivity system, heterogeneity
(the elements arrive, transform themselves, connect themselves,
dissociate, etc. within a more macro entity)
Critique of the traditional metaphysics

21. Questioning the existing models of service
conceptual models = static view
behavioral models = rigid and operational approach
absence of certain dimensions
It resonates among the concepts and formalizations of "action networks": narrative course of
Greimas, rhizome of Deleuze, actor-network of Latour (see the PhD thesis of Delalonde C.), etc.
Multi-Agents Systems : interesting characterization of agents as autonomous and interactive agents
but agents are ≠ from active entities that are not anthropomorphic beings (decision unit featuring
performances, etc.) and whose unique purpose is to connect itself with other (shape change through
mediation)
Technical environments are not adapted

22. Proposition of a new model: the « SERVICIAL AGENCEMENT »
constructed thanks to the mathematical approach of the SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES
based on the notion of HYPERGRAPHE and the characteristics of multidimensionality,
adjacency and symmetry relationships between elements
Close to the idea of « configuration of heterogeneous elements » advocated by SSME
(« specific arrangements of people and technologies take actions that provide value for
others » (Spohrer, 2008)) and the notion of « arrangement of parts » advocated by
Simons (Richard et al., 2010)
Observation and modeling of the movements behind the forces that change the
« spectrum of the phenomenon »: network as a means to make visible the dynamic
Building of the proof of concept of a “servicial agencements” modeling and
simulation environment : iSamsara

23. METHODOLOGICAL and PRACTICAL
FRAMEWORK

24. Entités actives vides et
autonomes
Connexion
Designers Connexions
Clara habite à Marseille, elle simpliciales
contacte ses parents et son
frère pour planifier la
prochaine réunion familiale.
Son frère est dans sa chambre,
Sélection devant son ordinateur. Dès
que le ser
Annotation
Extraction et
interconnexion Calcul
Importation structure
Entités actives Calculs
Documents
trajectoires
Ontologies
Conversions
(Bugeaud, 2011)

25. Complex node Structural hole
Point of articulation Isthme
(Bugeaud, 2011)

26. studie:
Case studie:
– Telepresence
– Steps:
(Bugeaud, 2011)

27. – Extract from the results:
(Bugeaud, 2011)

28. BENEFITS

29. Benefits for the telecom operator:
A reference model and a new approach that have to be integrated within the actors’ practices of
innovation in order to support their thinking face to services situations
Around twenty published papers (conferences, workshops and journals) during the thesis
Expected scientific / theoretical benefit :
Des perspectives d’approfondissement
A formalization of the concept of "Service System" through the relationship, activity and
experience (interest of the community SSME and knowledge engineers)
A new type of heterogeneity and dynamicity oriented model: “agencements” (here servicial)
A lot of perspectives

30. QUESTIONS
florie.bugeaud@nekoe.fr