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Despite service productivity’s scholarly prominence and practical relevance, past research in marketing has primarily adopted isolated perspectives from which disjointed empirical findings reign supreme. As the acquisition of knowledge about service productivity accelerates, the collective evidence becomes more interdisciplinary but also more fragmented. This study uses a meta-analysis to integrate the substantial empirical record on service productivity. We formulate hypotheses on the moderators of service productivity-determinant relationships and meta-analyze 77 articles, relying on 81 independent samples with a cumulative sample size of 30,238 participants to test our predictions. Our meta-analysis provides empirical evidence that service quality and internal efficiency must be considered jointly, not in isolation, to maximize profitability. Thus, relying on one aspect in isolation is less appropriate for measurement purposes and might not lead to positive outcomes. This important finding should concern service scholars and managers because falling profit margins require service firms to move beyond the traditional manufacturing productivity that separates service quality from internal efficiency and consider service productivity as a profitability concept. In sum, our findings provide a viable model to explain the main service productivity determinants and moderating variables, offering valuable insights for practitioners that aim to deliver cost-efficient service quality and promising future research directions.

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Ensuring that innovations are implemented organisation-wide remains a critical business challenge for organisations. This study identifies how organisations can improve the effectiveness of innovations and specifies the effects of innovation implementation antecedents and capabilities. By applying a mixed method approach, using data from 42 semi-structured interviews and 125 questionnaire participants, we develop a new framework for understanding the mechanisms that underlie and enhance effective innovation implementation. The results emphasise that achieving high and consistent use of innovations requires organisations to focus on organisational members and their individual characteristics, rather than on organisational design. Additionally, implementation leadership serves as a central mediator to explain the framework’s relationships. Furthermore, a middle management-driven approach that combines implementation leadership and dialogue facilitates the effective implementation of innovation. In conclusion, our study contributes to innovation implementation research by presenting a framework to guide future research, whilst helping practitioners to implement innovations more effectively.

The service productivity literature has grown remarkably over the last two decades and has gathered substantial knowledge. However, with the gradual acceleration of knowledge production about service productivity, the collective evidence becomes more fragmented and interdisciplinary. The purpose of this literature review is to systematically identify and analyze 190 publications focusing on service productivity to link previously dispersed studies as a next step in theory development. By clustering existing service productivity research into macroeconomic, mesoeconomic, and microeconomic dimensions, our review reveals that much progress has been made in advancing the open-ended theory of optimal service productivity. Reviewing key insights from the existing literature, we show that the majority of service productivity research adopts a one-sided industrial perspective that primarily focuses on firm productivity. Although valuable, these studies most often leave out consumers’ time and effort, neglecting the value of consumer-generated input. Thus, the present research offers a new conceptualization of service productivity by emphasizing it as an open and customer-inclusive process that transcends the service producer–customer divide. Finally, we contribute a set of propositions. Within these propositions, we identify beneficial conditions and means for firms to improve service productivity. In sum, the article provides policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with valuable guidance for developing means to generate positive effects in a service economy that lacks productivity.