The Naples Forum on Service invites researchers and practitioners to submit papers addressing the 2025 theme: “Care for actors, communities and environment". This edition emphasizes how care—a concept encompassing empathy, sustainability, and responsibility-intersects with and enhances the foundational pillars of the Forum: Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic, Service Science, and Systems Theory & Complexity. Contributions are encouraged that explore how care influences the service landscape, shaping interactions among actors, the environment, and the value co-creation process, especially in light of social and ecological sustainability. Additionally, in the context of “Care for Actors, Communities and Environment," technology plays a dual role: it is both a catalyst for enhancing care and a challenge requiring careful consideration. Submissions are invited to explore how digital platforms, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies can enhance care-driven value propositions, improve service provision, and foster sustainable and caring practices. At the same time, papers should critically examine the potential challenges these technologies pose to privacy, ethical service delivery, and the equitable distribution of resources across actors and generations.
The Forum starts on Monday 9 June, 2025, with registration and a reception at 6 pm.
On Tuesday, 10 June, the Forum opens at 8.30 am and ends on Thursday, 12 June, at 5 pm.
The venue will be Grand Hotel Vesuvio via Nastro Verde, 17 Sorrento
Call for Paper NFS25
We invite proposals dealing with themes within one or several of the 3 Forum Pillars: S-D logic, service science, and systems theory and complexity. We especially encourage submissions with an integrative perspective. The proposals could be theoretical and/or empirical and be based on qualitative and/or quantitative research.
Topics could include the following:
- Business models to manage networks and service systems
- Systems Theory and Complexity
- Experience, value-in-use, and value-in-context
- Industry 4.0 and digital transformation
- Service Innovation
- Integration and management of resources and capabilities
- Methodological challenges and issues in service research
- Practice-theory in service research
- Service ecosystems and markets dynamics
- Emergence and Institutionalization in Service Eco-Systems
- Service systems and systems thinking
- The Viable Systems Approach (VSA)
- Value co-creation and Value propositions
- Artificial intelligence and the human machine service interaction
- Smart Service experience and Smart Service provision
- Actor engagement
- Market-shaping
- Service Dominant logic as a grand theory
- Smart Technologies and value co-creation
- Phygital Customer Journey and Metaverse
- Smart nudging and wellbeing
AWARDS: Awards for valuable full papers will be attributed to manuscripts advancing knowledge within the three forum scientific pillars: Service Science, Systems Theory and Complexity, Service Dominant logic.
To submit you abstract, please log-in or register to our manuscript management platform.
- Deadline for abstract submission: January 10, 2025
- Notification of acceptance: February 10, 2025
- Final paper submission (optional): April 30, 2025
Doctoral Workshop
It has been a tradition to hold a doctoral workshop preceding the main forum to stimulate discussion of ideas and dialogue about the three pillars among PhD students and service scholars.
The doctoral workshop is scheduled on June 9, 2025. The workshop will comprise both keynote presentations and breakout sessions where doctoral students will have a chance to discuss their PhD projects with designated faculty mentors in small groups.
PhD students in all stages of their PhD research project are encouraged to participate and present their research proposals, preliminary results, and their reflections on issues related to service theory, methods and analysis.
Entry into the doctoral workshop is competitive, and places will be limited to 20 students. If you would like to participate in the workshop, please submit an application containing:
- Research proposal summarizing your PhD project (max 1500 words, excluding references)
- Brief motivation letter explaining how you would contribute to the workshop, and how the workshop fits your research interests
- Short academic CV
The application should be sent by January 20, 2025 to the co-chairs, using the subject line 'NFS 2025 doctoral workshop.
- Prof Kaisa Koskela-Huotari, kaisa.koskela.huotari@hhs.se
- Prof. Debora Sarno, debora.sarno@uniparthenope.it
Important dates
- Deadline for application submission: January 20, 2025
- Notification of acceptance: February 10, 2025
- Deadline for final research proposal submission: May 3, 2025
- Date of the Doctoral workshop: June 9, 2025