According to service-dominant logic (S-D logic), all providers are service providers, and service is the fundamental basis of exchange. Value is co-created with customers and assessed on the basis of value-in-context. However, the extensive literature on S-D logic could benefit from paying explicit attention to the fact that both service exchange and value co-creation are influenced by social forces. The aim of this study is to expand understanding of service exchange and value co-creation by complementing these central aspects of S-D logic with key concepts from social construction theories (social structures, social systems, roles, positions, interactions, and reproduction of social structures). The study develops and describes a new framework for understanding how the concepts of service exchange and value co-creation are affected by recognizing that they are embedded in social systems. The study contends that value should be understood as value-in-social-context and that value is a social construction. Value co-creation is shaped by social forces, is reproduced in social structures, and can be asymmetric for the actors involved. Service exchanges are dynamic, and actors learn and change their roles within dynamic service systems.

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Expanding understanding of service exchange and value co-creation: a social construction approach

In the current article, we provide a critical review of the extant literature that has focused on environmental influences on cognitive and brain plasticity over the adult life span The review includes both human epidemiological, and human and nonhuman cross-sectional and longitudinal research We review a number of factors that have been suggested to reduce age-related cognitive decline including both formal and informal education, leisure pursuits, intellectual engagement, and expertise in different skill domains We also examine the literature on cognitive and physical fitness training We conclude with a discussion of the gaps in the literature and suggestions for future research

Environmental Influences on Cognitive and Brain Plasticity During Aging

This paper critically reviews a number of cross-national studies of perceptions of risks which have been conducted in accordance with the 'psychometric paradigm' developed by the Oregon research group in the 1970s. It considers attempts to study risk perception comparatively, from other theoretical and methodological perspectives, and discusses various issues that are highlighted in a comparative framework, relating to distinctions between 'objective' and 'perceived' risk, the role of communication and the media, the political system and various societal determinants such as marginality, gender and ethnicity. One of the main conclusions is that comparative studies of risk perception need to be further refined, both methodologically and theoretically.

Comparative studies of risk perception: a review of twenty years of research

The Interrelationships among Informal Institutions, Formal Institutions, and Inward Foreign Direct Investment

Using a nationally representative sample of employed men and women in this longitudinal study, the authors extended for another 20 years findings based on 1964 and 1974 data (Kohn & Schooler, 1983) that substantively complex work improves intellectual functioning. This study provides evidence that intellectual functioning and substantive complexity of work continue to reciprocally affect each other. In addition, it shows that the intellectual flexibility measure used earlier (Kohn & Schooler, 1978, 1983) is highly correlated with more standard measures of intellectual functioning. Most importantly, it shows that, although substantively complex work significantly increased the level of intellectual functioning of both the younger and older halves of the sample, the effect is significantly greater among the older workers.

The continuing effects of substantively complex work on the intellectual functioning of older workers.

This chapter examines cross-national differences in individual values, attitudes, and behaviors. The central question raised is how social-structural and cultural factors account for the differences found. After discussing a series of theoretical issues raised by this question, the chapter reviews the findings of four quantitative sociological research programs on modern cross-national differences. The program on individual modernity led by Alex Inkeles established that social-structural conditions associated with industrialization are linked to an increase in individuals' being open to new experience, rejecting traditional authority, and taking a rational, ambitious, orderly approach to both work and human problems. The cross-national research on the Kohn-Schooler hypothesis that self-directed work increases intellectual functioning and self-directed orientations confirmed the generality of that hypothesis and established that the social status and social class differences in these psychological characte...

Carmi Schooler

Papers

Cultural and Social-Structural Explanations of Cross-National Psychological Differences 1