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Purpose – Service-dominant logic (S-D logic) has conceptualized value as value-in-context where context is defined as a “set of unique actors with unique reciprocal links among them” (Chandler & Vargo, 2011, p. 40). The chapter proposes a means of measuring value-in-context as experienced by an actor while integrating resources, called the ValConRIA model (value-in-context of resource integrating activities).Design/methodology/approach – Value emerges from experiencing interactions in a service-for-service exchange. The actor perceives value as emerging with his activities and hence experiences the emerging value as connected to either his activities or the items supporting his activities or the people he is interacting with. We call these realms of experience the I (–Me) realm, the I–It and It–I realm, and the I–You and You–I realm, composing five dimensions. An exploratory principal component analysis supports this structure. The measurement process has been tested for reliability and validity and applied to different activities: using a laptop, using cigarettes (=smoking), using a smartphone, and using Facebook.Findings – According to where the actor mostly experiences the value emergence, five dimensions of value-in-context have been identified using principal component analysis. The measurement scale shows high construct reliability and discriminant validity.Implications – Being able to measure value-in-context as proposed by S-D logic brings S-D logic into practice. Practitioners can use the measurement process to identify value their customers co-create. The proposed means of measuring value-in-context does not measure the value of things but instead values as it emerges from an actor’s activities, exchanging service for service.Value/originality – To our knowledge this chapter is the first to propose a means of measuring value-in-context, which is based on S-D logic.

The purpose of this study is to identify the role of mediators in supporting value co-creation for vulnerable consumers in a service context. The authors propose that in transformative services, the roles of actor mediators facilitate control and empowerment for the vulnerable consumer – labelling these transformative service mediators (TSMs).

The authors develop a theoretical framework for the activities of mediators in value co-creation considering the interrelationships of vulnerability, structure and agency. The authors then use Prahalad and Ramaswamy’s DART (Dialogue, Access, Risk Assessment and Transparency) model as the integrating framework to describe the TSM roles in the context of the foster care service ecosystem.

The authors introduce a future research agenda regarding TSM roles in transformational service experiences and value co-creation with vulnerable consumers. Service researchers and providers are encouraged to explore effective training and motivation of TSMs.

Understanding value co-creation for vulnerable consumers is an emerging area in service research. The TSM concept introduces a new approach to explore how value co-creation and transformative outcomes can be enhanced in service contexts where consumers experience vulnerability.

This paper presents an agenda for future research. The outcomes of future research based on TSM roles may help guide service providers in identifying opportunities for enhancing well-being and reducing vulnerability in service delivery.

This paper suggests that exploring the role of TSMs in the service process offers new insights into reducing vulnerability in service relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether explicitly communicating the customer’s resource integrating role in value propositions improves or diminishes value proposition effectiveness.

Based on existing research on value propositions, three effectiveness criteria are used: role clarity, expected customer value, and purchase intention. Two experiments manipulating the presence of the customer’s resource integrating role in value propositions test the conceptual model in both an indirect interaction (Study 1, toothpaste, n=207) and a direct interaction context (Study 2, fitness program, n=228). Additionally, Study 2 includes the moderating role of resource availability.

Explicitly communicating the customer’s resource integrating role in value propositions increases customers’ role clarity, which in turn influences customer’s attitude toward the service and purchase intention through a service-related (i.e. expected benefits and expected efforts) and an ad-related (i.e. ad credibility and attitude toward the ad) route. However, these results only hold for customers high in resource availability.

This research provides initial empirical support for the often-stated claim that value propositions should include the (potential) value of the offering as well as the (resource integrating) role of the customer. Taking a broader perspective, this research provides initial empirical support for recent calls to develop marketing communication practices that facilitate value-in-use. This paper’s findings show that adopting service logic in marketing communications seems to improve value propositions’ effectiveness.

Little is known about the variations in service co-creation on social media, despite the resource integrating capabilities and co-creator roles afforded by these platforms. The gap is even more troubling in the nonprofit sector, where leveraging public interaction on social media is prevalent and vital to charitable and philanthropic endeavors. Arguably, such interaction is embedded in resource integrating activities leading to nonprofit service co-creation. This paper reports the forms, dimensions or service co-creation measures enabled by social media use in the nonprofits' sector.

The authors conducted a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. First, the authors interviewed 19 social media managers in education, health and social service nonprofit organizations to identify the varieties in service co-creation realized. Second, the authors surveyed 73 nonprofit organizations on social media and gathered 267 useable responses, which were used to analyze and validate the identified forms of service co-creation.

The authors found that nonprofit organizations realize up to seven forms of service co-creation using social media. These include co-ideating to tweak service ideas, co-diagnosing social needs and problems, co-assessing service events, co-transforming services to targeted communities, co-advocating for community and service reach, co-resourcing in service delivery, and co-experiencing through a pool of diverse service experiences.

This study develops a reliable and valid multidimensional measure for nonprofit service co-creation enabled by social media platforms. Theoretically, this study offers a nonprofit service co-creation model to drive nuanced explanatory research and service co-creation perspectives in other contexts and engagement platforms. Managerially, this research illustrates the variations in service co-creation, which inform the strategic value of social media to nonprofits and will assist nonprofit practitioners in planning and evaluating their service co-creation outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of institutions and institutional complexity in the process through which resources-in-context get their “resourceness.”

To shed light on the process of potential resources gaining their “resourceness,” the authors draw from two streams of literature: the service ecosystems perspective and institutional theory.

The authors combine the process of resources “becoming” with the concept of institutions and conceptualize institutional arrangements, and the unique sets of practices, symbols and organizing principles they carry, as the sense-making frames of the “resourceness” of potential resources. In service ecosystems, numerous partially conflicting institutional arrangements co-exit and provide actors with alternative frames of sense-making and action, enabling the emergence of new instances of “resourceness”.

The paper suggests that “resourceness” is inseparable from the complex institutional context in which it arises. This conceptualization reveals the need for more holistic, systemic and multidisciplinary perspectives on understanding the implications of the process of resources “becoming” on value co creation, innovation and market formation.

As the “resourceness” of potential resources arises due to the influence of institutions, managers need a more profound understanding of the complimentary and inhibiting institutional arrangements and the related practices, symbols and organizing principles that comprise the multidimensional context in which they operate.

This paper is one of the first to focus specifically on the process of resources “becoming,” using a systemic and institutional perspective to grasp the complexity of the phenomenon.

This article seeks to advance a novel service network perspective, based on the service‐dominant logic, designated as service‐dominant networks (SDN).

Service‐dominant logic components serve to build and describe SDN. Specifically, resources and actors are key components, combined with activities and the process by which they become resources. A case study details the features of SDNs.

Service‐dominant networks exhibit unique, previously unaddressed features. According to the service‐dominant logic, components only become resources when they are integrated; thus, they disappear as resources after their integration, which means SDNs are fugacious: they (be‐)come and go. In addition, SDNs comprise one or more main intended activities that explain their existence, though these intended activities do not necessarily initiate any particular SDN. Rather, other critical incidents can initiate SDNs.

The features of SDNs proposed in this article have not been a focus of prior research. In particular, the dynamics and fugaciousness of SDNs are challenges for research and management.

This article offers the first proposal of a novel, service‐dominant network perspective. In a very general and abstract form, it identifies the features of SDNs.

This paper aims to conceptualize and characterize service ecosystems, addressing calls for research on this important and under-researched topic.

The authors draw on four meta-theoretical foundations of S-D logic – resource integration, resource density, practices and institutions – providing a new integrated conceptual framework of ecosystem well-being. They then apply this conceptualization in the context of a complex healthcare setting, exploring the characteristics of ecosystem well-being at the meso level.

This study provides an integrated conceptual framework to explicate the nature and structure of well-being in a complex service ecosystem; identifies six key characteristics of ecosystem well-being; illustrates service ecosystem well-being in a specific healthcare context, zooming in on the meso level of the ecosystem and noting the importance of embedding a shared worldview; provides practical guidance for managers and policy makers about how to manage complex service ecosystems in their quest for improving service outcomes; and offers an insightful research agenda.

This research focuses on service ecosystems with an illustration in one healthcare context, suggesting additional studies that explore other industry contexts.

Practically, the study indicates the imperative for managing across mutually adapting levels of the ecosystem, identifying specific new practices that can improve service outcomes.

Examining well-being in the context of a complex service ecosystem is critical for policymakers charged with difficult decisions about balancing the demands of different levels and actors in a systemic world.

The study is the first to conceptualize and characterize well-being in a service ecosystem, providing unique insights and identifying six specific characteristics of well-being.

This paper aims to develop impact value (IV), both theoretically and practically, to better account for the processes of value creation within complex service ecosystems.

This conceptual paper connects the complex systems nature of service ecosystems and the complexity of issues of sustainability and well-being to the need for a conceptual and analytical extension of value within service ecosystems.

This paper defines IV as enhancement or diminishment of the potential of stakeholders (beyond the service beneficiary), to transfer or transform resources in the future, based on direct and indirect involvement in the processes of value-in-exchange and value-in-use creation.

This paper provides an initial exploration of the theoretical and practical extension of value through the IV concept.

Sustainable service ecosystems require actors to understand their role in the service process and account for the impact pathways of their value creation activities. This paper proposes a framework for developing sustainable strategies to account for IV.

This research expands service research’s core concept of value by integrating the complex systems nature of service ecosystems, sustainability and well-being. IV provides a means to address the systemic impact pathways of service and value creation processes and bridge idiosyncratic value-in-use and broader system viability concepts.

Multi-supplier project networks represent a large part of the business-to-business (B2B) sector as the scope of many projects requires that different providers participate in their development and delivery. This raises the question of how the integration of the resources of the various partners can be shaped successfully. Specifically, the different organizational identities provide institutional frames of reference to the resource-integrating firms. As the organizational identities are typically not harmonious with each other, at least partial misalignments of the institutional setting that shapes the resource integration processes may emerge. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of various organizational identities on the course and outcome of resource integration in project networks.

The paper makes use of interpretive phenomenology in conjunction with a qualitative case study approach to access the lived experience of actors of different professional service firms having experienced changes in resource integration in a B2B project network.

A conceptualization of organizational identity as an institutional context for resource integration is developed and empirically investigated. The findings show a strong impact on the firms’ organizational identities and the actors’ resource integration experience and evaluation. Moreover, the findings provide evidence that, if unmanaged, at least partial misalignment of the institutional arrangements of multi-organizational B2B project network represents a normal and also a stable condition.

As a first conceptualization and empirical analysis of the interplay between organizational identity and resource integration, this paper advances the current understanding of the institutional context for resource integration. It argues for the wider relevance of organizational identity constructs and paves the way for future development.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce ecotones to the service literature as a conceptual extension of the service ecosystem (SE) framework.

To synthesise the contribution, an illustrative empirical case study with research of nine organisations and their service systems is developed.

Boundaries connect systems with their environment. Ecotone, a concept from natural ecosystems, provides a useful concept representing the boundary zones between adjacent systems, supporting emergent phenomena. The authors find that a service ecotone emerges through the interactions occurring at the intersections of relational, technological and institutional boundaries of two unique SEs. The case demonstrates ecotone edge effects – the unique landscape and diversity of actors and their roles – which play a role in the co-evolution of the separate SEs.

The ecotone concept provides an understanding of SE boundaries, helping practitioners understand the complex environments they operate. Developing strategy in complex ecosystems requires a clear understanding of where the boundaries of dependence and interdependence lie. The ecotone concept helps practitioners to develop responsiveness and resilience to their environment and take advantage of resources that may be currently unrecognised.

The authors introduce the ecotone concept and integrate it with service theory. This paper develops service ecotones for understanding the relationship between different systems that influence their functioning and development. Thus, ecotones suggest new avenues for understanding the diversity and roles of actors, and how new structural properties, resources and practices come to be through the tensions and interactions created in these complex boundaries of SEs.