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About

Kars Mennens is a leading researcher at the intersection of service management, human-robot interaction, and technology implementation. His work primarily explores the dynamics of service triads—the complex interplay between service robots, customers, and frontline employees. Mennens’s most influential paper, “The service triad: an empirical study of service robots, customers and frontline employees” (2021, 142 citations), fundamentally advances our understanding of whether robots augment or substitute human labor in service settings, providing critical insights for both scholars and practitioners. He has also made notable contributions to educational robotics, examining confidentiality concerns in student-robot interactions (2024), and to healthcare, where his qualitative study on social robot Ivy (2025) identifies key facilitators and barriers to sustained use in care for people with intellectual disabilities. By bridging theoretical frameworks with practical implementation challenges, Mennens’s work informs the responsible deployment of service robots across sectors. His research is essential reading for anyone studying the future of work, technology adoption, or human-centered automation.