Incorporating AI Technology in the Service Sector : Innovations in Creating Knowledge, Improving Efficiency, and Elevating Quality of Life

Due to advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence and robotics, the service sector is being reshaped, and AI may even be necessary for survival of the service industries. Innovations in digital technology lead to improving processes and, in many situations, are a solution to improving the efficiency and the quality of processes and services. This volume examines in depth how AI innovation is creating knowledge, improving efficiency, and elevating quality of life for millions of people and how it applies to the service industry. This volume addresses advances, issues, and challenges from several points of view from diverse service areas, including healthcare, mental health, finance, management, learning and education, and others. The authors demonstrate how service practices can incorporate the subareas of AI, such as machine learning, deep learning, blockchain, big data, neural networks, etc.

The diverse roster of chapter authors includes 48 scholars from different fields, (management, public policies, accounting, information technologies, engineering, medicine) along with executives and managers of private enterprises and public bodies in different sectors, from life sciences to healthcare. Several chapters also evaluate AI’s application in service industries during the COVID-19 era.

This book, Incorporating AI Technology in the Service Sector: Innovations in Creating Knowledge, Improving Efficiency, and Elevating Quality of Life, provides professionals, administrators, educators, researchers, and students with useful perspectives by introducing new approaches and innovations for identifying future strategies for service sector companies.

Maria José Sousa (PhD in Management) is a university professor with habilitation and a research fellow at ISCTE/Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal. Her research interests currently are public policies, information science, and innovation and management issues. She is a bestselling author of books on research methods, ICT, and people management and has co-authored over 100 articles and book chapters and published in several scientific journals (i.e., Journal of Business Research, Information Systems Frontiers, European Planning Studies, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Future Generation Computer Systems, and others). She has also organized peer-reviewed international conferences and is a guest editor of several special issues from Elsevier and Springer publications. She has coordinated several European projects of innovation and is also an external expert of COST Association (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) and is former President of the ISO/TC 260–Human Resources Management, representing Portugal in the International Organization for Standardization.

Subhendu Kumar Pani, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Krupajal Engineering College, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. He has more than 15 years of teaching and research experience. His research interests include data mining, big data analysis, web data analytics, fuzzy decision-making, and computational intelligence. He is the recipient of five researcher awards. In addition to research, he has guided many PhD students and MTech students. He has published over 50 international journal papers (many of which are Scopus indexed). His professional activities include roles as associate editor, editorial board member, and reviewer of various international journals. He is associated with a number of conferences and societies. He has more than 150 international publications, several authored books and edited books, and book chapters to his credit. He is a fellow of the Scientific Society of Advance Research and Social Change and a life member in many other professional organizations. Dr. Pani is also editor of the book series AAP Advances in Artificial Intelligence & Robotics.

Francesca Dal Mas, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting at the Department of Management, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. She was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Enterprise at the University of Lincoln, England. She was a visiting research fellow and guest lecturer at the University of Pavia, Italy; the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan; the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong; the IHU–Institute for Image-Guided Surgery in Strasbourg, France; the Sharif University of Technology of Tehran, Iran, among others. Her research interests include healthcare management, intellectual capital, knowledge management, sustainability, digital transformation, and new business models. She has more than 100 publications on the above-mentioned topics. She is an international assessor for the MIKE (Most Innovative Knowledge Enterprise) for Italy and Iran. Dr. Dal Mas holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from the University of Udine, Italy; a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Bologna, Italy; and a PhD in Managerial and Actuarial sciences from the Universities of Udine and Trieste, Italy.

Sérgio Sousa, PhD, is a Programme Co-Director and Visiting Professor in the human resource management (HRM), business and psychology domains, with over 25 years’ experience teaching in higher education in the United Kingdom and abroad. A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), he holds a PhD in Management, an MSc in Science and Technology, and a BA (Hons) in HRM and Organizational Psychology. He has specialized qualifications from the University of Cambridge, UK; INSEAD, France; Babson College, Massachusetts, US; and the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Concurrently, he has been working as a senior HR Director, working with several FTSE100, FT Global 500, and Fortune 500 companies. He has more than 20 years of international exposure at the management level in numerous business sectors in the scope of HRM, talent, and learning.