The research contained here can be characterized in these ways: (1) Research methods adopt interpretative approaches such as hermeneutic and/or narrative approaches rather than causal and functional explanations such as "cause-consequence" relationships.

This is the first book to introduce the major quantitative tools in risk management taking financial investments and logistics planning as the background: optimization and stochastic programming.

This book presents a general conceptual framework to translate principles of system science and engineering to service design. The primary focus is on the part of the service system that can reproduce such processes, called here a Service Machine, and methodological guidelines on how to analyze and design them.