The process of globalization over the past five decades has given impetus to drivensustainability and related thinking in business. It is also observed that there areunprecedented trends in corporate strategy towards sustainable thinking - the emergenceof sustainability as corporate strategy and the concern of business for ecology and society.This forces companies to rethink their standard business models and increase theirinterest in innovating products and services based on the challenges of global sustainabledevelopment. The pressure from external stakeholders, mainly non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs), as drivers of change may also contribute strongly to thisendeavour. This substantial change pressure clearly reflects companies’ recognition of themounting pressures for social responsibility and governance. The overall aim of this thesisis to describe and understand how social responsibility and value-creation of customers’influence the overall service quality of companies in developing a sustainable servicebusiness. The theoretical and conceptual frame of reference finds its stimulation from the researchin sustainable development – corporate social responsibility, service research and qualitymanagement. In this way it attempts to bridge the gap between business and socialresponsibility. Theoretically and conceptually, the thesis amalgamates sustainabilitythinking and the service logic. Here, value creation and co-creation of Service DominantLogic (S-D logic) approach expands to integrate the values based approach of CorporateSocial Responsibility (CSR) in management thinking and have created the prevailingbusiness practices and service quality (SQ) improvement. This thesis is a compilation offive different papers that follow an interpretative case study approach. The empiricalstudy developed from the cases of multinational companies, small and mediumenterprises, smallholders and NGOs. In this thesis, ‘Sustainable Service Dominant Logic’ (SSDL) was labelled to argue thatvalue-based co-creation of the S-D logic framework can be used to create values-basedservices for sustainable business by examining the link between CSR and S-D logic basedon value, values and service quality for sustainable business. This is this thesis’scontribution to the ongoing discussion of the paradigm shift in service research. Theframework is of the integration of CSR thinking into service business to create sustainablebusiness thinking. This signifies the new thinking of incorporating different managementsystems in creating the organizational change process, sustainability and finally SQimprovement. This counters the critique against S-D logic by expanding the societal andethical dimensions by using CSR, and showing real business cases. This depends on theintegration of different change pressures for value creation, whether related to economicand social resource integration. This involves the shift of the focus of managerial controlfrom a preoccupation with financial issues to a wider awareness of CSR thinking. Theseissues are also explored by demonstrating, based on cases, how the adoption of thisperspective can also enable the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) framework to become animportant aspect of value creation. Finally, the paradigm shift can be generalized to newthinking in S-D logic and the social responsibility of businesses as the major phenomenonof the changing and globalizing business environment; time for the CSR framework to permeate S-D logic.

This thesis concerns Patient Experience (PX), in hospital maternity care in Sweden. The focus lies in the development of a measure to describe the current state of PX. The thesis uses a semi-sequential mixed-methods study design; exploration of the patient journey, through qualitative methods, informs the adaptation of an existing maternity care experience survey instrument. The resulting survey instrument is tried in a pilot study and renders a composite measure of PX. Part of the analysis is dedicated to understanding the e!ect of information and communication in PX; Exploratory Factor Analysis is used to test the model and attempt an answer. The results show that it is possible to describe PX using the proposed survey instrument. The composite measure preserves di!erences in perceptions better than an arithmetic average of two discrete VAS-1 type measurements, and is more appropriate when measuring attitudes, and opinions using Likert-type measures. A three component solution describes 65.44% of the total sample variance. Determining to what degree PX is influenced by information and communication remains di"cult to quantify, but these initial results indicate that the manner of the attending sta! during aftercare and the respondent’s mastery of information during discharge are important dimensions of patients’ total PX (ANOVA R .695, R Square .483). The model’s three components are almost entirely built from items that address interpersonal skills and information assimilation. These correspond to two of the three Service Quality Dimensions, namely Interaction Quality and Outcome Quality. Most important of the three is the component “Chemistry in aftercare”. The predictive strength of the model shows merit under the context of the study and could advise further e!orts to develop measurements for PX in maternity care in a Swedish hospital setting. Lastly, this study contextualises Service Design in hospital maternity healthcare; the study therefore o!ers ample opportunity for innovation. / Arbetet handlar om Patientupplevelse (PU), i förlossningsvården i Sverige. Fokus ligger på utvecklingen av ett mätvärde att beskriva den nuvarande patientupplevelsen. Arbetet använder kvalitativa och kvantitativa metoder (mixed-methods), i en semi-sekventiell design; utforskning av patientresan ligger till grund för anpassningen av ett existerande mätinstrument. Det nya mätinstrumentet testas i en pilotstudie och ger ett kompositmätvärde av PU. En del av analysen ägnas åt att förstå vilken e!ekt information och kommunikation har på PU; Explorativ faktoranalys används för ändamålet. Resultaten visar att det är möjligt att beskriva PU genom det föreslagna mätinstrumentet. Det resulterande kompositvärdet är bättre på att beskriva skillnader i uppfattning än ett medelvärde av två diskreta variabler av VAS-1 typen, och är också lämpligare när attityder och åsikter mäts med hjälp av Likert-skalor. En trekomponentslösning beskriver 65.44% av den totala stickprovsvariansen. Att avgöra hur mycket PU påverkas av information och kommunikation förblir svårt att kvantifiera, men dessa inledande resultat visar att patientbemötande under eftervårdstiden och patientens förmåga att bemästra information under utskrivningen är viktiga dimensioner av patienters totala PU (ANOVA R .695, R Square .483). Modellens tre komponenter är nästan uteslutande uppbyggda av variabler som fångar upp personliga relationer och assimilering av information. Dessa motsvarar två av de tre dimensionerna i Servicekvalitetsmodellen, nämligen Interaktionskvalitet och Utfallskvalitet. Viktigaste komponenten är Personlig kemi under eftervården. Modellens förutsägningsstyrka visar förtjänst under studiens kontext och kunde informera framtida ansträngningar att utveckla mätvärden för förlossningsvården inom svensk sjukhusmiljö. Till sist kan nämnas att studien kontextualiserar Service Design inom förlossningsvården; studien erbjuder därför omfattande möjligheter för innovation.