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To determine where, when, how, and wherefore European social theory hit upon the formula of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” and how its structural position as a skeleton for the theory of action has changed.

Genealogy, library research, and unusually good fortune were used to trace back the origin of what was to become a ubiquitous phrase, and to reconstruct the debates that made deploying the term seem important to writers.

The triad, although sometimes used accidentally in the renaissance, assumed a key structural place with a rise of Neo-Platonism in the eighteenth century associated with a new interest in providing a serious analysis of taste. It was a focus on taste that allowed the Beautiful to assume a position that was structurally homologous to those of the True and the Good, long understood as potential parallels. Although the first efforts were ones that attempted to emphasize the unification of the human spirit, the triad, once formulated, was attractive to faculties theorists more interested in decomposing the soul. They seized upon the triad as corresponding to an emerging sense of a tripartition of the soul. Finally, the members of the triad became re-understood as values, now as orthogonal dimensions.

This seems to be the first time the story of the development of the triad – one of the most ubiquitous architectonics in social thought – has been told.

The research reported here derives from a recently completed questionnaire survey of the UK mechanical engineering industry and a series of follow‐up case studies. The case studies investigated the product design strategies adopted by firms for achieving competitive edge. It was found that companies were consolidating their product ranges and increasing the use of bought‐out components. There had thus been a shift from internal manufacturing (hierarchy) to bought‐out manufacturing (market). This was complemented by the changes, over the last few years, in the production system. That is, the adoption of manufacturing, or FMS, cells. Here, companies were feeding more components through these machining cells rather than using other, more expensive, manufacturing techniques, such as die casting. Thus, product design has had to match these changes in manufacturing strategy. Increased competition from Japan had also led companies to reduce lead times on product introduction. The research identifies the product design strategies the firms had adopted to achieve competitive edge. These were the better management of the product design process through project teams or project management. The use of design reviews for tailoring designs for efficient manufacture and early consideration of manufacturability. The full utilization of prototypes to eliminate production difficulties. These management factors and the ability to use CAD/CAM‐FMS technology enabled the companies to maintain competitive edge.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a solution to the challenges of professional service firms (PSF), which are referred to as cat herding, opaque quality and lack of process standardization. These result from misalignment in the mental pictures that managers, employees and customers have of the service. The study demonstrates how the process of articulating a shared service concept reduces these challenges.

A narrative methodology is used to analyze the perspectives of old management, new management and employees during organizational change in a PSF – a website design company growing to offer full-service branding. Group narratives are constructed using longitudinal data gathered through interviews and fieldwork, in order to compare the misaligned mental pictures and show the benefits of articulating the service concept.

Professional employees view growth and change as threats to their culture and practice, particularly when new management seeks to standardize processes. These threats are revealed to stem from misinterpretations caused by miscommunication of intentions and lack of participation in decision making. Articulating a shared service concept helps to align understanding and return the firm to equilibrium.

The narrative methodology helps unpack conflicting perspectives, but is open to claims of subjectivity and misrepresentation. To ensure fairness and trustworthiness, informants were invited to review and approve the narratives.

The study contributes propositions related to the value of articulating a shared service concept as a means of minimizing the challenges of PSFs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify service design strategies to improve outcome-oriented services by enhancing consumers’ emotional experience, while overcoming customer variability.

An abductive, multiple-case study involves 12 service firms from diverse online and offline service sectors.

Overall, six service design strategies represent two overarching themes: customer empowerment can involve design for typical customers, visibility, and community building, while customer accommodation can involve design for personas, invisibility, and relationship building. Using these strategies helps set the stage for a service to offer an emotional experience.

The study offers a first step toward combining investigations of service experience and user experience. Further research can strengthen these links.

The six design strategies described using examples from case research offer managerial recommendations. In particular, these strategies can help service managers address the customer-induced variability inherent in services.

Extant studies of experience staging have focused on particular sectors such as hospitality and leisure; this study contributes by investigating outcome-focused services and identifying strategies to create unique experiences that offset variability. It also represents a rare effort to combine research from service management and interaction design, shedding light on the link between service experience and user experience.

Reports on research based on the results of a survey of design management in the UK mechanical engineering industry. Considers the issue of which aspects of production were considered in the design of products and when. Demonstrates that at the prototype stage production aspects became the most important. This shows that the manufacturability of the product is not considered until after it has been designed. Concludes that the effective and efficient manufacture of the product is not given sufficient attention by mechanical engineering firms. Also investigates the involvement of production personnel in the design process. Finds that production engineering was more extensively involved in the design process the closer it moved towards manufacture. Points to further research which hopes to address this lack by providing practical tools for the application of concurrent engineering.

This chapter explores the relationship between emotional design and customer experience. It begins with an introduction to the concept of emotional design, comprising behavioral, visceral, and reflective elements. Next, the nature of service experiences is examined, leading to a framework that classifies services according to their functional and experiential positions. Understanding customer goals allows this framework to be used to design customer experiences, in terms of the journey that customers take when consuming a service. The chapter then discusses the cognitive traits associated with designers and argues that they are well suited to understanding the customer journey and designing the prerequisites for the desired experience. Two different approaches to understanding and acting on customer requirements are explored – user centered and design driven.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of product‐service systems (PSS). It uses a multiple method approach to analyse literature and cases and synthesise a framework for the understanding and investigation of PSS. It demonstrates the need to consider the “organisation” or network, of firms involved in defining, designing and delivering value through the PSS. This is conceptualised as a product‐service‐organisation (PSO).

The paper uses three complementary methodologies: a road‐mapping analysis, investigating industrial challenges for collaborating enterprises, a multidisciplinary literature review of PSS concepts and analysis of two cases.

The paper finds that value can be most effectively delivered by networks of collaborating firms, integrating the products and services they offer to create the value which customers seek. In short, creating value requires the simultaneous design of product, service and organisation – the PSO triangle.

The paper offers a new classification of PSS related literature, drawing on a broad review of research in marketing, design and operations management related to service and PSS. The framework helps researchers understand the organisational challenges of PSS and provides suggested future research directions and questions.

The framework provides the foundations for a process to develop PSS. It highlights the organisational challenges and suggests that a systematic yet iterative process can be devised to create and deliver value. This means defining customer value which can be profitably delivered; designing the PSS to create this value and identifying the required capabilities; and finally creating and managing the network of partners responsible for delivering value.

The major contribution is a link between the emerging PSS literature and previous research on virtual enterprises and other types of organisational networks. The paper argues that PSS often creates the need to identify and access capabilities through a collaborative network. This is conceptualised in the PSO triangle.

Over the last two decades, Japanese products have challenged Western ones, not only in terms of cost but also on quality, reliability and delivery. This has meant that meeting customer needs on time has now entered the competitive equation. Hence, in the 1990s, time to market (TTM) has become a focal point in achieving competitive advantage in the marketplace. Presents an overview of TTM and of how to do it. Considers the costs and benefits of TTM, and uses two case studies to compare and contrast the effect of adopting TTM and ignoring it. Looks at the key factors of: tools and techniques; technology; team management and logistics, with practical examples of the main points in achieving TTM successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to implement the simulation game in the cultural comparison study so as to understand the impact of cultural differences on the team interaction.

In order to focus on the factor of “national culture” and avoid other factors which can affect the results, this paper conducted a simulation game – COSIGA – for the data collection and factor control. Two sets of groups were performed to represent two national cultures – the UK and China.

This paper finds that there is more decision providing in the UK teams and more decision seeking in the China teams. The China teams used a more intuitive process to make decisions, and the UK teams used a more reference process to make decisions. There were more repetitions of the problem‐solving process in the China teams than in the UK teams. The looping problem‐solving process was present in the China teams and the linear problem‐solving process in the UK teams.

This paper presents a case study of cultural comparison using a simulation game. The selection criteria and factor control of the simulation game is outlined for the practical implications.