Organizational Transformation Through Service Design: The Institutional Logics Perspective.

In this article, we provide in-depth insight into the process of adopting service design (SD) by a large service organization. We use an inductive interpretive approach and draw on rich longitudinal data collected in one of the world’s major telecommunication companies that undertook a series of SD initiatives to improve its innovation capability. We find that instead of merely bringing new services, SD has far-reaching consequences for organizations, prompting significant changes in the organizational mindset and routines. Building on the institutionallogics perspective and acknowledging the role of individuals’ institutional work, we identify the macro-level and micro-level mechanisms of the organizational logic transformation that SD induces. Interestingly, the effects are bidirectional, as the organizational context has a considerable impact on SD as an innovation practice. As this study shows, managers and other practitioners can effectively overcome organizational hindrances to the adoption of SD by creating an SD-based corporate language, realigning key performance indicators, and facilitating learning and experimentation.