Service science: exploring complex agile service networks through organisational network analysis

The discipline of service science encourages the need to develop alternative and more scientific approaches to conceptualise modern service network environments. This chapter identifies the opportunity to apply organisational network analysis (ONA) as a novel approach to model agile service interaction. ONA also supports the visualisation of a service infrastructure which sustains agile practice. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate how the concept of agile service network (ASN) may be examined through an unconventional method to model service operations. ONA demonstrates the exchange of resources and competencies through an ASN infrastructure. Ultimately, this chapter provides a platform to develop an audit framework with associated metrics borrowed from ONA. ONA concepts offer a new analytical approach towards ASN (for example, structural, composition, behavioural, and functional). This has a significant theoretical contribution for software engineering performance. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2503-7.ch008

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