Journal of Service Research Special Issue on ai service and Emotion

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Call for Papers 

Journal of 

Service

 

Research

 

Special Issue on 

 

AI Service and Emotion 

 

Special Issue Editors: 

Richard Bagozzi, Dwight F. Benton Professor of Behavioral Science in Management, University 

of Michigan ([e-mail]) 

Michael K. Brady, Bob Sasser Professor of Marketing, Florida State University 

([e-mail]) 

Ming-Hui Huang, Distinguished Professor, Department of Information Management, National 

Taiwan University ([e-mail])  

 

Submission Deadline: Full papers due April 15, 2021 

 

JSR, a preeminent service journal, with a 5-year impact factor of 9.211, announces a special 

issue on AI Service and Emotion. This special issue, like JSR, is broad and interdisciplinary, 

and is relevant and timely to important managerial and societal service issues. As AI (artificial 

intelligence) continues to advance, it plays an ever-increasing role in service. However, people 

tend to mistake that AI is just about rational thinking; however, recent research reveals that AI in 

service has important implications for emotions as well.  

 

At the micro-task level, frontline interactions are interaction- and emotion-intensive, requiring 

HI (human intelligence) to be capable of emotional intelligence, and when AI is used to perform 

frontline interactions, it either has to have such emotional intelligence or it should complement 

HI for such interactions. We have witnessed such a replacement effect during the COVID-19 

pandemic, when social distancing is required and AI is used to automate ordering and delivery to 

avoid human contact (see the JSR call for Frontline-in-Change special issue). 

 

At the macroeconomic level, AI, as thinking machines, has pushed the economy from 

manufacturing, to thinking service, to feeling service. The feeling service economy is 

characterized by AI doing the thinking tasks and HI doing the feeling tasks. This has important 

implications for how the economy should prepare HI for this disruptive change; for example, 

human workers will need to re-skill to be more feeling and empathetic. 

 

The special issue welcomes submissions from all disciplines with a service interest, such as 

service management, marketing, strategic management, information systems, economics, 

engineering, human resources, operations research, computer science, consumer research, 

psychology, and sociology. The analysis level can be micro, meso, or macro, and the 

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methodology can be conceptual, empirical, or computational. Potential topics include, but are not 

limited to: 

 

•  The Feeling Economy, e.g., the nature, characteristics, composition, timing, transformation 

mechanism, and consequences of the economy (more equal and inclusive, or less). 

•  Managing AI, e.g., how firms can transform to become more feeling-oriented, how to apply 

and manage various AI intelligences for efficiency (productivity) and effectiveness. 

•  The roles and benefits of AI for emotions in service, e.g., engaging customers in their service 

journeys, meeting their emotional needs. 

•  The dark sides of using AI for emotions in service, e.g., increasing loneliness, distancing 

service interaction and relationships, disengaging customers, and customer rage. 

•  The collaboration, augmentation, or replacement of AI for HI in service, e.g., what types and 

levels of HI skills are required (e.g., empathy, authenticity, sincerity), how AI and HI work 

as a team. 

•  Data, machine learning, AI and service emotions, e.g., AI for capturing and sensing 

emotional data, for analyzing, simulating and synthesizing service emotions, and for reacting 

to emotions in service interactions 

•  Driving technologies and technological requirements for the Feeling Economy and for 

service emotions, e.g., what AI can be considered as emotion-aware AI, what is required to 

develop feeling AI, and what are the technological bottlenecks for emotional AI.  

 

Process and Timeline 

Papers will undergo no more than two stages of full peer review. After the second round of 

review, a final decision will be made, to ensure the timeliness of publication. The special issue 

operates in a tight timeline, and authors should expect quick turnaround for reviews and 

revisions. The special issue is planned to be published in May 2022 and accepted papers will be 

published online first.