The Richard Normann prize 2007 jury has unanimously determined that the winner of this year's prize is Dr Mark Stein, for his "Toxicity: Troubled times at the employee-customer interface" entry.

Of all the entries to this year's prize, this is the one which most furthers Richard Normann's work. It paradoxically takes issue with one of Richard's most well-received suggestions - that in the service economy co-producers would be an ever more important component.

Dr Stein shows instead that when under severe pressure from demanding customers, employees in cost-conscious operations such as call centres will consider that customers pollute them, and will act to reduce co-production.To do so Stein deploys the metaphor of toxicity and with it analyses how front-line employees re-present their stressful interfaces with customers as repulsive and even dangerous - and react against more intimate or prolonged co-production - for example with obnoxious customers. Interestingly Stein's focus on the sub-conscious aspects in co-production was identified much later by Normann in his 'Reframing Business"'(2000) as a crucial aspect in re-framing business situations.

Steins work offers an important explanation as to why, after at least four decade of managerial experience and theorising about service (co-)production, many customers are still unhappy and even frustrated by the services they receive- in any case, far more frustrated with service quality than with the quality of most goods.

Stein's work offers grounds to re-think how realistic the empowerment of the front-line worker can be, questioning not only whether 'inverting the pyramid' - as Jan Carlson from SAS famously suggested - is possible, but also and more importantly whether attempting to do so unfairly renders front-line workers and assistants more vulnerable than bureaucracies do - as Bourgeois (2001) suggested - thus in the end decreasing, rather than increasing service quality.

Stein's work has profound implications for the customer-service employee boundary and its design and management. We are thus delighted to award the 1st Richard Normann Prize to him.

Pasquale Gagliardi, Professor, ISTUD, Italy

Larry Hirschhorn, CFAR, USA

Rafael Ramirez, Professor and Fellow, Saïd Business School, Oxford University & HEC