10th Anniversary Organizational Frontlines – Special Issue

Journal of Service Research announces a…

“10th Anniversary Organizational Frontlines” Special Issue

Submission Window: March 31, 2025 – May 31, 2025

Guest editors: Todd Arnold, Mike Brady, Tom Brown, Jagdip Singh

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Organizational Frontlines (OF) initiative, the Journal of Service Research is excited to announce a Special Issue focused on advancing the study of organizational frontlines. The term “Organizational Frontlines” (OF) broadly refers to the study of interfaces, interactions, and time (IIT) at points of contact between organizations and their customers, where value is created and exchanged (Singh, Brady, Arnold, and Brown 2017; Singh and Bridge 2023).

We welcome conceptual, empirical (e.g., historical, qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method), and review articles on any topic related to phenomena at the frontlines of organizations. As a multidisciplinary journal, the Journal of Service Research (JSR) encourages interdisciplinary perspectives and invites submissions from authors across a wide range of disciplines for this 10th OF Special Issue.

The primary goal of this Special Issue is not only to reflect on the progress made over the past decade but also to chart a course for the future. We seek forward-looking papers that break new ground, spark interest, and boldly advance the field of Organizational Frontlines (OF).

The following topics illustrate areas of particular interest; however, they are not exhaustive and reflect the field’s openness to diverse perspectives and frontline phenomena. Authors are encouraged to reach out to any member of the editorial team for inquiries or clarification.

Designing Frontlines

• How can interfaces be conceptualized as dynamic, spatial constructs (physical, digital, or virtual) that vary in capacity and efficiency for customer-firm interactions? What explains these variations, and how can they be effectively designed? Additionally, how can interface design accommodate the flexible and dynamic adaptations of both customers and organizations?

Dynamic Frontlines:

• What organizing frameworks and frontline capabilities are most effective for coordinating customer handovers between touchpoints to optimize subjective time and ensure seamless customer engagement? What technologies can detect customers’ states to infer subjective time, and how effective are these technologies across different customer segments and contexts?

Managing Frontlines:

• How can the portfolio of interfaces available to customers at any given time be managed to balance effectiveness, cost, and speed? How can their effectiveness in reducing interaction friction be tracked, and when and how should innovations be introduced to enhance their impact?

Regulating Frontlines

• How can trade-offs between personalization-targeting and privacy-monetization be theorized, modeled, and tested to ensure compliance with consumer privacy preferences and ethical data practices?

Innovating Frontlines:

• How can the relational dynamics in customer-firm interactions across multiple touchpoints be theorized, modeled, and tested to explain fluctuations in relational communication acts? These dynamics involve multiple entities pursuing goals and are characterized by features such as interdependence, feedback effects, and dynamic interactions?

Orchestrating Frontlines:

• How do consumers interact with brands across multiple touchpoints and platforms? How can customer interactions be designed and orchestrated to flow seamlessly across human and machine interfaces, as well as physical and virtual environments, ensuring coordination for efficient problem-solving and value creation?

Researching Frontlines:

• What novel theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches can be developed to study organizational frontlines? How can we enhance the validity dimensions in frontlines research and identify new approaches to studying frontline phenomena? 

Submissions to the 10^th OF JSR SPECIAL ISSUE are…

• invited for submission on the JSR webpage between 03/31/2025 and 05/31/2025.
• open to all scholars in any discipline with OF interest
• open to conceptual, empirical or review contributions
• open to any and multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual, group, organizational, cultural)
• scheduled to be processed on a “first accepted – first published” basis. 

Questions regarding submissions to either the Special Issue may be sent to any one of the co-editors:

Todd Arnold – todd.arnold@okstate.edu;
Mike Brady – mbrady@fsu.edu;
Tom Brown – tom.brown@okstate.edu;
Jagdip Singh – jxs16@case.edu