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Technology is revolutionizing the management logic of service systems. The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, is challenging interaction between humans and machines changing the service systems’ value co-creation configurations and logic. To envision possible future scenarios, this paper aims to reflect upon how the humans’ use of AI technology can impact value co-creation.

The study is developed, at a conceptual level, using selected elements from managerial and marketing theoretical frameworks interested in value co-creation – Service-Dominant Logic, Service Science and Viable Systems Approach (VSA) – used as interpretative tools to reframe value co-creation in the digital age.

The interpretative approach adopted and, in particular, the new VSA notion of Intelligence Augmentation (IA), in the perspective of the information variety model, shed new light on value co-creation in the digital age framing a possible “IA effect” that can empower value co-creation in complex decision-making contexts.

The study provides insights useful in the design and management of service systems suggesting a rethinking of the view of AI as a means for mainly increasing the smartness of service systems and a new focus on the enhancement of the human resources contribution to make the service systems wiser.

The paper provides a refocused interpretative view of the interaction between humans and AI that looks at a possible positive impact of the use of AI on humans in terms of augmented decision-making capabilities in conditions of complexity.

Purpose – The aim is to introduce a sociological perspective on resource integration and value co-creation into service research using a service systems approach.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual and a case study of the service system a Telecom Equipment and Service Provider is embedded in is reported.

Findings – The service practice of the service system is framed by social structures of signification, legitimation, and domination. However, the practice is also independent of the structures since it is embedded in and shapes the structural realm.

Research implications and limitations – Drawing on structuration and practice theory, the chapter offers a new framework describing how social and service structures and practices can inform and reveal mechanisms of service system dynamics. Based on the framework, three propositions are developed focusing on the mechanisms of resource integration and value co-creation. The implications need to be generalized in future research by studying other empirical contexts.

Practical implications – The chapter provides some tentative guidelines on how organizations can design service systems that enable and support customers and other actors in their resource integration and value co-creation processes by paying attention to social structures and forces and not only resources as such.

Originality – The chapter explicates how social structures have implications for value co-creation and resource integration in service system. It makes systematic use of structuration and practice theory to understand the social dimensions of service systems. A distinction between intended and realized resource integration is made.

Suggestion systems have always been used as the means of continuous development and co-creating values among the employees of organizations. On the other hand, the co-creation has been introduced as a solution to co-create values between companies and customers. Since a simultaneous study on setting up suggestion systems and co-creation among employees and customers have been ignored so far, the purpose of this paper, focussing on the combination of two strategies of suggestion systems (generally more effective among the employees of organizations) and co-creation (studied so far merely the scope of customers), is to evaluate variables leading to intention to use, improvement in understanding the concept of justice, and positive word-of-mouth.

Two between-subjects experiments were carried out to explore the interactional role of co-creation, reward, and time in efficiency of suggestion systems. The first study which was carried out among customers analyzed the effect of setting up suggestion systems along with co-creation on the amount of their intention to use this system in the future and positive word-of-mouth. The second study discussed the effect of setting up suggestion systems along with co-creation on the level of understanding organizational justice and commitment.

The results indicate that the effectiveness of co-creation and tangible factors, such as offered reward, on improving the evaluation of suggestion system. In the other word, when firm’s encourage customers to participate in value co-creation program in suggestion system, they perceive more justice and intend to participate more in such program in future.

Most of the previous studies carried out on co-creation considered its effectiveness on occasions when a service failure occurs to consumers and the service provider urgently needs service recovery, but this paper aimed to provide a collaborative perspective toward co-creation through suggestion system that puts emphasis on service experience, innovation, and intention to future participation in such programs.

This paper aims to explore the potential contributions of the for-profit sector in integrating resources with social marketing organisations for value co-creation at the meso level (midstream) of the social marketing eco-system. The paper addresses calls for further theorisation and understanding of value co-creation beyond the micro level (downstream).

The paper draws from social marketing, value co-creation and eco-systems literature to present a conceptual model for meso-level value co-creation between social marketing and for-profit organisations.

The paper proposes four dimensions of resources which can be integrated: cognitive, labour, economic and network. Additionally, it is proposed that from these integrated resources, three co-creation outcomes can be achieved – co-learning, co-design and co-production – which lead to improved value propositions.

This paper offers a framework for strategic planning and evaluation regarding partnerships and collaborations with for-profit organisations, which potentially lead to greater value propositions being offered.

This paper furthers the theoretical discussions and understanding of value co-creation in social marketing at the meso level. The paper identifies a new actor – for-profits – as a potential collaborator for value co-creation with social marketing organisations and contributes new understanding about value co-creation at the meso level between social marketing and for-profit organisations. Further, the paper describes and reviews the potential contributions of for-profits to social marketing efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of actors that allow them to relate to others actors in the system through shared intentionality (orientation) and the nature of the A4A relationship and the results that such interactions bring to the emergent system based on this shared purpose (finality).

The topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development of three integrative frameworks: the sociological perspective, service-dominant logic and a particular perspective of system thinking: the viable system approach (vSa).

The A4A relationships involve value co-creation based on actors integrating their resources and acting with intentionality to obtain value by providing benefits to other parties and by belonging to the emergent viable system; actor acts for other actors directly involved in the relationship generating positive effects for the whole system in which it is contextualized.

Future empirical research might better support findings.

Many social implications deriving from an augmented role of actors engaged within social relationships in co-creation exchanges. From the title of the paper A4A over on the manuscript describes numerous social inferences of actors in co-creation.

A4A is a relationship formed by actors that interact for the benefit of the whole system in which are involved. They find own benefit from the benefit created for the system in which they live and act. In A4A relationships the value of the single actor comes from the participation to the viability of the whole system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of value co-creation in complex value networks with many actors. Electronic health records (EHRs) are innovations that warrant deep study to properly introduce such a complex system.

The paper describes a qualitative study based on Grounded Theory to understand value co-creation from multiple actors’ perspectives in a National EHR Service Project: the Portuguese Health Data Platform.

Study results enabled further development of the value co-creation concept in complex environments with multiple actors. More specifically they allowed: operationalizing the value co-creation concept by identifying its factors and outcomes, understanding how value co-creation factors and outcomes are interconnected, and understanding of how value co-creation for each actor depends on his/her own actions and the actions of other actors, in a complex set of interactions and interdependencies.

The findings have implications for service managers seeking to understand how actors participating in the network integrate resources and interact to co-create value. The study highlights the need for designing and managing services to co-create value, not only by enabling dyadic interactions between the customer and the service provider, but also by supporting and enabling value co-creation interactions among different actors in the network.

This study responds to the need for empirical research on value co-creation in many-to-many contexts and for operationalizing the value co-creation concept.

In the co-creation process from a network perspective, service is produced, designed, and evaluated entirely by the actors with dynamic roles and with less participation by the firm's employees in the service process. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model that represents environmental stimuli and value perceptions that contribute to service co-creation behaviour in an online network.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of two online programming communities – GitHub and Stack Overflow co-creators, with the data analysed using thematic analysis. The stimulus-organism-response model guided the development of the final model.

Social influence and trust are influential in actor value perceptions, including primary and network value, the interplay of which leads actors to co-production, supportive, and administrative behaviour. Environmental factors do not directly drive actors; rather it is the value that initiates and drives actors, which, by extension, initiates and drives the co-creation of services.

The service co-creation behaviour model provides a basis for future research in the co-creation and co-destruction context to model behaviours within the online network organisation setting and thereby enable improvement of such systems. This model can be operationalised in a network environment through design features.

This paper provides a rich understanding of environmental stimuli and value perception factors that contribute to the co-creation of services, and identifies different types of behaviours in dynamic online networks. This paper presents a new model of different types of behaviours emerging from actor participation in the co-creation process.

A service system, including self-service technologies (SSTs), should facilitate actors’ value co-creation processes to enhance customer experiences. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how customers’ experiences – both favorable and unfavorable – are formed by identifying the underlying drivers when using SSTs in the context of a self-service-based system. The authors also analyze customers’ journeys, which occur before, during, and after their experience with a self-service-based system with SSTs.

An exploratory, inductive study examines customers’ self-service experiences of using an SST. By undertaking 60 customer interviews, an event-based technique identified 200 favorable and unfavorable experienced events, which consist of activities and interactions identified through open coding guided by a theoretical framework. Customers’ experiences form through social norms and rules, referred to here as schemas. The authors sorted the drivers into four main categories of schemas (informational, relational, organizational, and technological) and into three categories: before, during, and after the store visit.

The authors identified 13 favorable and unfavorable customer experience drivers that guide value co-creation and explain how the flow of value co-creation helps form customers’ experiences.

The results are limited to one self-service system context and therefore do not provide statistical generalizability. In addition, the examined company already focusses on customer experiences; other organizations may have different experience drivers.

The results explain what is important when designing an SST-based service system. Besides, managers can promote the drivers in this research as advantages customers can gain by using self-service.

This study offers original contributions by: first, classifying and analyzing 13 experience drivers in four categories grounded in customers’ schemas; and second, offering a new conceptualization that focusses on the formation of customers’ experiences during a value co-creation process – that is, the customer's journey – rather than on the outcome experience only.

This study aims to explore the dynamics enabling strategic account management (SAM) to function as a value co-creation selling model in the pharmaceutical industry.

Using an inductive qualitative research design, data are collected within 11 industry customers in Canada. This work focuses on hospitals as strategic accounts of pharmaceutical companies, exploring SAM value co-creation in the “hospital-pharmaceutical company” relationship.

The findings suggest the presence of two key dimensions that can enable a value co-creation SAM model in the hospital-pharmaceutical relationship: “customer-tailored value-added initiatives” and “relationship enhancers”. Customer-tailored value-added initiatives explain the activities that are central to the hospital-pharmaceutical company relationship and can lead to the provision of value added that is unique to the hospital. Relationship enhancers explain the activities that can help strengthen hospital-pharmaceutical company relations in the pursuit of enhanced value-added interactions between the two parties. The research demonstrates a cyclical relationship between “customer-tailored value-added initiatives” and “relationship enhancers”, leading to value co-creation through a SAM model.

The study informs pharmaceutical industry practitioners on how to improve their value proposition through new, more sustainable selling practices. It offers information on implementing a value co-creation SAM model, which can enable pharmaceutical companies to sustain long-lasting value-added relationships with key accounts such as hospitals.

The study contributes to the field of SAM by conceptualizing SAM as a value co-creation system. It introduces new knowledge in pharmaceutical marketing by offering empirical insight on the applicability and use of SAM in the hospital-pharmaceutical company dyad.

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework of archetypical customer roles in a self-service-based system by applying role theory to understand customers’ resource integration and value co-creation efforts in practice.

This study is based on a three-phase explorative case study of customers’ experiences of using self-service technologies at a furniture retailer. A total of 90 interviews were conducted.

Four archetypical enacted customer roles during value co-creation in a self-service-based system are identified: passive non-bothered, passive hesitant, active realist and active independent. Furthermore, it is shown that these roles shape how resources become.

The challenges facing our retail practice bear similarities with those in other contexts, e.g. financial and travel industries, government or public sector service settings, in which self-service technologies are becoming more common. Therefore, this study setting enables some tentative generalizations. The case study approach, however, limits the statistical generalizability of the findings.

The importance of understanding is that not all customers are well-equipped for co-creating value through self-service. By engaging customers and offering them guidance when they encounter difficulties in managing the value co-creation process, as well as viewing them as resource integrators and value co-creators, firms can help them enact more active roles.

The archetypical customer roles contribute theoretically to detailing how resource integration and value co-creation can be shaped by enacted roles, an influence that has not been explicitly proposed in empirical service research.