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Abstract
Service co-production requires customers to perform value-creating tasks outside provider supervision, creating operational challenges when critical inputs vary in quantity and quality outside managerial control. We study whether an AI-enabled monitoring and feedback system can extend process supervision to these off-site inputs in the context of physiotherapy, where adherence to prescribed home exercises is a crucial co-production input. We conducted a 12-week sequential-cohort field study with 124 physiotherapy patients by monitoring home exercise with a digital technology that delivers technique feedback and progress tracking in real time. The dataset comprises 9,310 patient-days and 2,093 hours of movement data, complemented with semi-structured interviews with participants. We find that intervention participants completed more exercise than the control group overall. Both groups began the study with similar input levels, but the intervention cohort sustained participation over time, while control-group participation declined. Input quality patterns show that sustained participation stems from more than feedback alone. Although feedback value diminishes as proficiency is reached, sustained participation remains high with the intervention. From the qualitative analysis, we uncover three behavioral mechanisms that explain the intervention’s effectiveness. This research thus provides evidence that digital technologies can effectively extend process supervision to off-site customer inputs. For technology management, results support human-AI complementarity by showing that co-production AI systems are most effective when augmenting rather than replacing provider-customer relationships. We also offer insights with implications for professional services where performance depends on customer-provided inputs generated outside direct supervision.
Bio
Moren Lévesque is Professor and the CPA Ontario Chair in International Entrepreneurship and an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland’s Business School. Moren holds a Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of British Columbia and M.Sc., B.Sc. in Mathematics from Université Laval. She has been on the faculty at Université Laval, Carnegie Mellon University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Humboldt Universität, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Waterloo as a Canada Research Chair in Innovation & Technical Entrepreneurship. Her research applies the methodologies of analytical and quantitative disciplines to the study of decision making in new business formation. She is interested in market entry decisions, funding decisions, and firm growth decisions, and the impact of time on these entrepreneurial decisions. Her work appears in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Operations Management, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, Research Policy, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Strategic Management Journal, among other research outlets. She currently serves the Academy of Management’s Entrepreneurship Division as Representative-at-Large and has served as member of its Research Committee and its Midwest Regional Liaison, as well as Chair of its Membership Committee. She has also served for a 5-year term as an officer for the Institute for Operations Research & Management Science (INFORMS) Technology, Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship Section (TIMES), and as a TIMES Honorary Chair. Moren currently also serves as Editor for Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, and she served from 2010 to 2020 as Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management, and from 2013 to 2017 as Department Editor for IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. In 2021, she was awarded the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division’s Dedication to Entrepreneurship Award for innovative and impactful contributions to entrepreneurship scholarship.
