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The article aims to further understanding of purchasing practices in post-outsourcing buyer–supplier relationships, and it provides a holistic approach and onceptualizations with which to balance the perspectives of purchasing as an intra-firm operational function and as a strategic activity embedded in relationship and network management.

The research is based on an inductive-oriented case study. The data comprised 61 thematic interviews conducted at 17 buyer companies (electricity distribution companies), 11 service supplier companies and six third-party organizations. The case features a setting in which a growing number of electricity distribution companies have outsourced operational functions regarding network construction, maintenance and fault repair and purchased these services from service suppliers representing a developing service market.

The study explicates the role of purchasing as an element with the most impact on post-outsourcing buyer–supplier relationship outcomes and development. The performance of the buyer–supplier relationship either accelerates or inhibits the new service supplier’s entry to the field and motivates or demotivates the electricity distribution companies to outsource their activities. This mechanism links to the respective development of supplier markets and buyer industry transformation.

The focal study provides a holistic approach and conceptualizations with which to balance the perspectives of purchasing as an intra-firm operational function and as a strategic activity embedded in relationship and network management. In particular, the study provides conceptual development on purchasing practices in post-outsourcing relationships and concrete managerial implications for dealing with such circumstances. The focal study includes case notes that facilitate using the study for teaching purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to cast light on the nature of the digitalization process that occurs when digital technologies are adopted in buyer–seller relationships.

The study features a case study from the steel processing industry.

The present research builds on and extends the interaction approach to the context of buyer–seller relationship digitalization process. The study explicates the interrelated elements of digital infrastructure, digital communication and degree of digitalization of the buyer–seller relationship.

The study aims at theoretical generalization and thus produces conceptual understanding that is to some extent applicable to various contexts. The generalization of the empirical insights to other process-focused industries is to some extent possible. However, further research in versatile empirical contexts is needed to validate the results.

For managers, the study presents a success case of digital technologies use for improving a buyer–seller relationship.

The originality of the present research is in the way it depicts how a buyer–seller relationship is gradually digitalized in successive digital technology adoptions, that is, a virtuous cycle of digitalization, that creates and alters the digital infrastructure and digital communication processes between the buyer and the seller resulting in different outcomes (degrees of digitalization in the buyer–seller relationship).

The current research aims to answer the following question: To what extent and under what conditions does hiring consultants to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system produce performance gains for companies? To answer this question, this research delves into the critical interdependent roles of CRM consultant resources (CR) and user involvement (UI) in overcoming CRM’s technological and organizational implementation challenges.

A quantitative field study methodology was used to empirically test the research hypotheses. Cross-sectional data (N = 126) were collected from large client companies using CRM technology. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used to estimate the significance levels of the structural model.

The findings indicate that the extent to which CRM consultants improve CRM system quality (SQ) and, ultimately, firm performance, largely depends on UI, which acts as the key facilitating mechanism to cope with application complexity (APP) and requirements uncertainty (REQ).

This research probes into the largely unexplored interactions between CRM CR, UI, APP and REQ. Using these parameters, this model successfully predicts CRM SQ and firm performance.

The present study intends to foster understanding of how a traditional manufacturer can utilize the “simple rules” approach of managerial heuristics to facilitate its smart solution development (SSD) process.

The study uses an in-depth single case research strategy and 25 senior manager interviews to understand the application of simple rules in smart solution development.

The findings reveal process, boundary, preference, schedule, and stop rules as the dominant managerial heuristics in the case and identify how the manufacturer applies these rules during the innovation process phases of ideation, incubation, transformation, and industrialization for attaining project outcomes.

The study contributes to the new service development (NSD) literature by shedding light on simple rules and how managers may apply them to facilitate SSD. The main limitations stem from applying the qualitative case study approach and the interpretative nature of the study, which produces novel insights but prevents direct generalization to other empirical cases.

The resulting framework provides guidelines for managers on how to establish formal and clear simple rules that enable industrial solution providers to approach decision-making in smart solution development in a more agile manner.

The study comprises one of the first attempts to investigate managerial heuristics in the context of SSD and puts forward a plea for further NSD research applying psychological conceptualizations to enrich the simple rules perspective.

The purpose of this study is to define and analyse the emergence of collaborative engagement platforms (CEPs) as part of a rising platformisation phenomenon. Contrary to previous literature on engagement platforms (EPs), this study distinguishes between formalised and self-organised EPs and sheds light on collaborative EPs on which heterogeneous actors operate without central control by legislated firm actors.

Drawing on institutional work theory, this paper explores the institutional rules, norms and practices involved in the emergence of a new platform. This paper implements a longitudinal case study of a local food network called REKO and explores how engagement practices and institutional work patterns catalysed its emergence during 2013–2020.

The findings of this study show that actors engaged within the REKO platform participated in institutional work patterns of disruption, creation and maintenance, which drove the development of the platform and ensured its viability.

This paper encourages future research to further explore how different types of EPs emerge and function.

The rise of CEPs pushes the dominant managerial orientation to progress from the management “of” a platform to managing “within” a platform. For managers, this means developing novel practices for engaging and committing a versatile set of actors to nurture open-ended, multi-sided collaboration.

This study contributes by conceptualising different types of platforms with a particular focus on CEPs and explicating the engagement practices and institutional work patterns that catalyse their emergence.

The aim of this paper is to provide understanding on how the buyer can mobilize experience-based information scattered around the business network, by means of customer references, word-of-mouth and reputation, and how this facilitates the buying process.

The qualitative study scrutinizes eight cases comprising buyers of knowledge intensive services and technology innovations. The paper draws on the literature on buying and purchasing, customer references, word-of-mouth and reputational information.

The findings identify the different roles of references, word-of-mouth, collegial advice networks, and reputation, and suggest that experience-based information provides information on offerings, suppliers and the problem solving situation in complex buying per se.

The article's contribution is to provide a framework depicting the employment of experience-based information in complex buying, which ensues through focal and continuous buying processes. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of knowledge intensive, innovation and solutions business. Further qualitative research should aim to form constructs and define their interrelations to be tested in subsequent quantitative research.

This study generates new understanding on how buyers gather and use experience-based information to solve complex problems in buying. It contributes by merging references, word-of-mouth, collegial social networks, and reputation as sources of experience-based information, identifying information embedded in those means, and exploring how the information and means are used throughout the complex buying situation.

The current knowledge concerning how organizations adopt innovations is considerably less than the sum of its parts. The aim of this paper is to review the innovation adoption and diffusion approach and connect it with the main related theoretical fields within business-to-business marketing.

The paper provides a conceptual discussion, the aim being to develop an integrative conceptual framework.

The adoption and diffusion approach gives little indication of the effects on adoption of the established relationships and the wider relational setting comprising the direct and indirect influences between the network actors. It is rather the innovation and the related communication that are in focus. As a result, the innovation and its adoption and diffusion are considered unique phenomena, the actors are assigned the static roles of opinion leaders and change agents, social system can be defined, and there is no competition. The current theoretical approaches within the business-to-business marketing could provide support in building a more realistic view of adoption and diffusion in industrial context.

The contribution of the proposed conceptual model lies in its capacity to take into account organizational behavior in the form of individual-level actions that underpin the adoption process and relate this intra-firm behavior to its wider network context, thereby facilitating the production of a system-level account and a holistic understanding of the phenomenon of adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on perceived value for the participating actors during the new service development (NSD) process. The authors are particularly interested in how participant value emerges in a multi-actor NSD process and how it can be conceptualized.

The empirical research design comprised three extensive living lab experiments in a real end-user environment over a three years period.

The study is illustrative by its nature and advances two main arguments through conceptual analysis and empirical illustration: NSD can be seen as the identification of actual and emerging needs and technologies and their matching; and the matching process builds on the interaction between the participants and is characterized by their individual motives to leverage the NSD process for value-in-context.

A careful investigation of the different stakeholders' expectations of the NSD process provides a basis on which to create lucrative value propositions instead of approaching potential stakeholders with technology- or product-centric arguments.

The paper opens avenues for further research to develop the current conceptualizations of NSD in launching the new service emergence perspective.