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The purpose of this paper is to support effective business services provision along the life cycle of complex service-enhanced products, such as the case of solar power plants, and to explore collaborative approaches for multi-stakeholder business services.

Design and implementation of adequate collaboration strategies and cloud-based support mechanisms to facilitate creation and management of collaborative networks in this sector. For this purpose, a conceptual framework, a cloud-based platform and a set of collaboration support tools are proposed. Validation is based on a pilot implementation and interactions with a large group of end users.

Validation results confirmed the suitability of the collaborative networks approach in this sector, which often involves multiple small and medium size enterprises.

The interplay between long-term strategic networks and goal-oriented collaborative networks and their interaction with the various phases of the product-services life cycle correspond to a novel approach in this sector, traditionally focused on a sub-contracting model. This opens new opportunities for enhancing the value of complex products through collaborative value-added services. Of particular relevance is also the adoption of collaborative approaches for service co-creation.

This study aims to recognize industry 4.0 opportunities and challenges associated with the co-creation of value in industrial services and to propose a theoretical framework for smart industrial services systems.

The authors carried out a systematic literature review based on the systematic search flow method; thereafter, the authors used the content analysis proposed by Bardin (2011) to analyze the resulting portfolio.

The authors identified a total of five industry 4.0 opportunities and five challenges for co-creating value in industrial services. Drawing upon these findings, this paper builds a theoretical framework for the smart industrial services system, in which the industry 4.0 opportunities arise from the digitally mediated inter-firm interactions and the challenges related to the resources of this system.

This study may not have enabled a complete coverage of all existing peer-reviewed articles in the field of value co-creation in industrial services associated with the industry 4.0 technologies. Also, the framework is constrained by being theoretical rather than empirically grounded.

The findings give managers support to devise strategies for overcoming the barriers that impede them from taking advantage of the opportunities offered by industry 4.0 for co-creating value in industrial services.

This paper’s uniqueness is to identify the industry 4.0 opportunities and challenges for value co-creation in the context of industrial services and to propose a framework for the smart industrial services system.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue of the Journal of Service Management dedicated to the Thought Leadership in Services Conference held in Brisbane Australia in 2017. The paper also explores the disruptive and transformative role that technology is set to play over the next 30 years.

The paper provides a brief summary of the papers within the special issue. The paper also introduces a conceptual framework identifying four quadrants that reflect different combinations of human touch and technology. This framework is used to examine the treatment of technology in the eight papers.

While it is clear that technology is having a profound impact on service, and is contributing to major changes within the eight service domains captured by the papers in the special issue; there were significant differences observed across the eight papers in the special issue. From the associated discussion, it is clear that the humanistic paradigm is still dominant within services, even though there is strong evidence that a shift is occurring.

This paper extends earlier work exploring the infusion of technology within services to highlight the progress from a humanistic paradigm to a technology-centric paradigm.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretically and empirically grounded interdisciplinary framework for understanding service innovation in a business-to-business (b-to-b) context, particularly from the perspective of the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME).

This study used an abductive research process, supported by theoretical insights from a literature review, and empirical evidence from a multiple-case study. Six SME case companies were all transforming towards service logic. The empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews with the case companies and their business customers, workshops and business documents.

The study identified four critical service logic-related perspectives in service innovation in a b-to-b context, and related key questions: How is potential for new service business recognised? How is freedom of action perceived? What kinds of strategies are plausible? What are the reasons, objectives and support for the change? The shared interpretation of these questions within an organisation seemed to be related to the company’s success in doing business in new ways, enhancing service innovations and in their transformation to service logic.

This article offers a new interdisciplinary and empirically grounded perspective on innovation in the b-to-b and SME context framing the phenomenon in service logic. Tackling the questions is a precondition for SMEs in enhancing service orientation in strategy, mutual value orientation in organisational culture, their role in others’ business and collaborative business development, thus enhancing service innovations producing reciprocal value-in-use over time.

Swanson's tri‐core model and typology of IS innovation is used to analyze Web services as IS innovation. Reconciling theoretical and practical perspectives, we develop a three‐layer nested‐stage model as a road map for studying Web services innovation. Most current Web services practice is at the first stage as IS technological process innovation (Type 1b). High compatibility, high divisibility, and high customizability are the primary characteristics of Web service (Type 1b), which originate from the innovation invention layer. Perceived communicability, perceived relative advantage, perceived complexity, and financial cost are the secondary characteristics of Web services (Type 1b), which are located at the innovation adoption layer. We propose a readiness model to illustrate the key controllable factors that influence the adoption decision of Web services (Type 1b): innovation awareness readiness, innovation‐needs fit readiness, technological skills readiness, and financial resources readiness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the demographic characteristics of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with regards to their patterns of internet‐based information and communications technology (ICT) adoption, taking into account the dimensions of ICT benefits, barriers, and subsequently adoption intention.

A questionnaire‐based survey is used to collect data from 406 managers or owners of SMEs in Malaysia.

The results reveal that the SMEs would adopt internet‐based ICT regardless of years of business start‐up and internet experience. Some significant differences are spotted between manufacturing and service SMEs in terms of their demographic characteristics and internet‐based ICT benefits, barriers, and adoption intention. Both the industry types express intention to adopt internet‐based ICT, with the service‐based SMEs demonstrating greater intention.

The paper focuses only on the SMEs in the southern region of Malaysia.

The findings offer valuable insights to the SMEs – in particular promoting internet‐based ICT adoption for future business success.

This paper is perhaps one of the first to comprehensively investigate the relationship between demographic characteristics of SMEs and the various variables affecting their internet‐based ICT adoption intention.

Based on an exploratory case-based approach, the purpose of this paper is to open the KM black box and examine the relationships that link knowledge management (KM) inputs (i.e. knowledge resources and KM practices) via knowledge processes to KM performance. This paper aims to identify the underlying mechanisms and explain how KM performance is enabled.

This in-depth case study conducted at a medium-sized consultancy in the supply chain management industry empirically examines knowledge flows to uncover the relationships between KM inputs, knowledge processes and KM performance. We adopt the viable system model (VSM) as a theoretical lens to identify KM mechanisms.

By identifying six KM mechanisms, we contribute to the theoretical understanding of how KM inputs are interconnected and lead to KM performance via knowledge processes.

Based on the insights gained, we provide propositions that organizations should consider in designing viable KM. Our findings help organizations in understanding their KM with the help of knowledge flow analysis and identifying how critical KM elements are interconnected.

e‐Supply chains are fast becoming a reality. In order to manage such supply chains efficiently and effectively, traditional measures of supply chain performance are not adequate. The literature search revealed lack of measures and metrics for e‐supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to develop new measures and metrics for monitoring the performance of e‐supply chains.

A framework based on the benefits of e‐supply chains has been used to develop the metrics and measures. The study makes use of focus group discussion by assembling eight experts and practitioners in the field of e‐supply chain to come up with the measures and metrics. A questionnaire is designed with these measures and metrics and is sent to about 300 electronic component manufacturing companies in Malaysia to obtain feedback from the industry practitioners. Appropriate reliability and validity tests are conducted to measure the reliability of the instrument and validity of the constructs.

Through the focus group discussion, this study identifies six metrics and 21 measures. Further validation through the industry practitioners, reveals that these measures are important and some are in use by the industries. The six metrics are: web‐enabled service, data reliability, time and cost, e‐response, invoice presentation and payment and e‐document management metrics.

The study uses a simple framework and a sound methodology to develop new measures and metrics that are relevant for e‐supply chains.

The primary aim of this paper is to critically review the literature that explicitly addresses the adoption, application and impact of internet technologies, by retailers, for the promotion and sale of merchanidise. In particular, this paper seeks to present a holistic and critical review of the early predictions, with regard to the uptake and impact of internet retailing; critically reappraise these claims in light of current trends in internet retailing; and explore where e‐tailing may be heading in the coming years.

The paper adopts an extensive and critical review of the literature, with regard to the adoption, uptake and impact of internet retailing, as published in the academic literature over the past 20 years.

In hindsight, it can be seen that many of the original predictions, made at the dawn of the internet era, have not become a reality: retailers are not cannibalising their own custom, virtual merchants are not dominating the market‐place, and the high street has not, as yet, been put out of business. By contrast, other predications have come to pass: electronic intermediaries are playing an increasingly important role, “one‐to‐one” marketing has become a reality, prices are more competitive, and perhaps most importantly the consumer has become more powerful.

Providing a brief review of the past, present and future of online retailing is an extremely ambitious undertaking, especially given the vast amount of literature that has been published in this area. In attempting to provide an overall impression of the broad themes, and most important findings, to emerge from this important body of literature, it is inevitable that many important pieces of work will have been either missed or underplayed. Consequently, there is a need for follow‐up studies that aim to provide deeper and richer reviews of more narrowly defined elements of this vast landscape.

This study presents one of the first and most thorough reappraisals of the initial literature with regard to the likely development, implications, and impact of internet retailing. Moreover, the paper seeks to break new ground by attempting to use the current literature to help predict future directions and trends for online shopping.

The purpose of this paper is to further build up the knowledge about reasons for small and mid‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The paper presents and analyses findings in articles about proprietary ERPs and open source ERPs. In addition, a limited investigation of the distribution channel SourceForge for open source is made.

The cost perspective seems to receive a high attention regarding adoption of open source ERPs. This can be questioned and the main conclusion is that costs seem to have a secondary role in adoption or non adoption of open source ERPs.

The paper is mainly a conceptual paper written from a literature review. The ambition is to search support for the findings by doing more research in the area.

The findings presented are of interest both for developers of proprietary ERPs as well as SMEs since it is shown that there are definitely reasons other than costs involved when deciding on proprietary ERPs or open source ERPs.

It can be argued that there is a lack of research conducted and published about why SMEs choose open source ERPs instead of proprietary ERPs. This paper identifies the gap and suggests future research directions about this subject.