Inscribing Service into IT Service Management

Abstract: Processes of IT Service Management (ITSM) are often defined in frameworks and standards presented as best practices. However, existing best practices are often solely directed to service providers, which does not correlate to a modern service-dominant logic. Moreover, existing best practices are often re-garded as too comprehensive which prevents several actors from adopting them. Thus, this paper is based on the idea that there is a need to study how foundational premises of the service dominant logic could be inscribed into essential ITSM processes. This, we argue, will support practitioners to embrace a service culture while streamlining their work with ITSM work procedures. To this end, we have collab-orated with service providers and service customers and adopted the Action Design Research method-ology in order to identify, modify and evaluate essential ITSM processes in practice. Our theoretical contribution constitutes normative knowledge of enhanced essential ITSM processes from a service-dominant logic perspective.