Chapter 6

Service-Role Structures

In previous chapters we have discussed the dream of business ownership, and its daunting difficulties in practice, based on large numbers of ­moving parts and organizations with minds of their own. We have confronted the problem of how organizations create the components that in turn create organizations as webs of commitments to provide services. We have seen how the services perspective helps explain how this all works to create and capture value. Now let’s look more deeply into the actual components of organizations, service-roles that embody this federating power of ­commitment, and harness it in value-creating services.

Roles as Building Blocks

A straightforward, 50-year-old, statement on the importance ...

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