Examining Resilience Across a Service Ecosystem under Crisis

ABSTRACT

In the face of rising infection rates and increased healthcare demand, COVID-19 overwhelmed healthcare systems. System-wide change was subsequently necessary to absorb and adapt to the crisis through a new digital service‒telemedicine. The study unpacks how precursor resilience was actuated across the service ecosystem. Drawing on qualitative data from multiple healthcare actors, the study adopts oscillating foci to examine ecosystem resiliency across three levels: micro (physicians and patients), meso (healthcare managers) and macro (policymakers). Findings show the centrality of service co-design to service ecosystem resiliency, demonstrating the role of multi-actors at multi-levels for building ecosystem resilience during COVID-19 and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• resilience
• precursor resilience
• healthcare
• service ecosystem
• service co-design
• telemedicine

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2021.2012375.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the generosity of the Federal University of Technology Paraná's Biomedical Engineering Postgraduate Research Programme. We are grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive insights and comments that helped to further refine and strengthen the manuscript. Finally, we thank the guest editors of this special issue for their guidance throughout the review process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Higor Leite

Higor Leite is an Associate Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management and Leader of e-healthcare Research Group at the Federal Technological University of Paraná. He is an associate member of the Centre for Service Management at Loughborough University in the Uk. Higor’s research interests include lean healthcare, e-healthcare, telemedicine and healthcare improvement. His work has been published in journals, such as Production Planning & Control, Public Money & Management, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Leadership and Health Services and the TQM Journal.

Ian R. Hodgkinson

Higor Leite is an Associate Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management and Leader of e-healthcare Research Group at the Federal Technological University of Paraná. He is an associate member of the Centre for Service Management at Loughborough University in the Uk. Higor’s research interests include lean healthcare, e-healthcare, telemedicine and healthcare improvement. His work has been published in journals, such as Production Planning & Control, Public Money & Management, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Leadership and Health Services and the TQM Journal.

Ian R. Hodgkinson is Professor of Strategy at Loughborough University, School of Business and Economics. Ian’s research interests include strategy development, strategic decision-making, and service performance. His work is published in leading international journals including in Public Administration, Public Management Review, Journal of World Business, and Australian Journal of Public Administration, among many others. He currently serves as Associate Editor of Journal of Service Management and European Journal of Marketing.