One year as an Excellent research group at Karlstad University

The background to the University’s excellent initiative is to provide the strongest and strategically most important research groups favorable conditions to evolve – to strengthen the research at Karlstad University.
Opportunity to grow and strengthen our position
- For CTF, this is an opportunity to grow and further strengthen our position as one of the world’s foremost research centers in service research, says Henrietta Huzell, Director at CTF. With the appointment we will receive additional financial support from the University- resources that we will use for investment in a new research field of service science – Transformative Service Research, TSR. We will also grow by recruiting Ph. D students, researchers and Visiting Professors. Our ambition is that our researchers will be able to work abroad, and have more articles published in the most prestigious scientific journals. The appointment and our success is largely based on our interaction with the community, both the private and public sector, and we intend to continue. As an excellent research team we also have the responsibility to seek more external funding, including from EU, and here are our partners play a big role.
The investment has already paid off
During the past year, CTF with the leadership of Anders Gustafsson, Professor, initiated a new international network “International Network of Service Researchers” which include highly ranked service researchers from all over the world. The aim of the network is to strengthen service research. The first meeting of the network was held in Karlstad where the researchers came together to discuss joint research projects on a global level and how scientific journals can be involved in this initiative.
Professors Per Skålén and Bo Edvardsson along with Ph. D student Kotaiba Abdul-Aal wrote the article “Co-creating the Arab Spring: Transformation of service systems in contention” that will be published in Journal of Service Research first special issue on TSR.
Two of CTF’s fall seminars focused on TSR and were held by specially invited Laurel Anderson and Amy Ostrom from Arizona State University, Center for Services Leadership, the United States. The researchers gave an insight into what TSR means and presented their research in the field. The seminars were very appreciated and a good start for the researchers and Ph. D students who will work in this field.
Recruiting is important and besides new Ph. D students and recently graduated Ph. D’s we also recruited visiting professors from Switzerland, the US and the UK.
Collaboration between academia and practice
- Right now the final preparations are in full swing for one of this Fall’s collaboration activities, Service Convention Sweden, 2014. The conference will be held on December 9-10 at Karlstad CCC. This year the focus is on welfare services where the theme is, creating value through services. The aim is to give the participants a better understanding of the traditional service sector, but also in other industries where a focus on services is the key to survival. Service Convention Sweden is a collaboration between CTF, Karlstad Municipality, Värmland County Council, Karlstad Convention Bureau and Karlstad Congress and Culture Center, and there are plans to continue the conference for at least three more years. It not too late to sign up! Registration is done through serviceconventionsweden.se, says Henrietta Huzell.