Value co-creation in practice : an activity theory approach to service-based and networked business relations

Abstract

This study examines value co-creation in networked service-for-service business relations. Current literature considers value through the experiential and circumstantial properties that permeates co-creation. Contemporary research also indicates the integration of resources and value facilitation as key aspects for co-creating value. This work suggests that value co-creation is a continuously changing practice that expands within on-going knowing and learning movements. The research collected the data of the study during the years of 2010-2012 in the city of Fortaleza – Brazil. Fieldwork concerned the implementation of IT systems in hospitals and clinics. The investigation comprised six case studies nested in two main cases. The first main case presents the perspective of the supplier side, while the second approaches a client organization. The methodology of the study, the case study ethnography, draws on cultural-historical activity theory and applies developmental work research in natural settings. Value co-creation in networked service-for-service relations emerges as multifaceted systems of diverging interests. Resource integration relates to questioning daily practices and envisioning potentialities. Interactions evolve through fast and distributed encounters that co-configure resolutions. In the context of multiple and diverging interests and contradictions, co-creating value refers to managing change. Knowing and learning how to co-create value consist in practicing transformational movements of navigating and interacting within multiple locations and participants in order to resolve contradictions in and between activity systems. The study identifies value co-creation as a dialectical system of practice. Contradictory elements hamper mutually benefiting relations at the same time that create possibilities for changes in the direction of co-creating value. The practice of value co-creation concerns questioning daily practices, knotworking value, and managing change. The central aspect of this practice concerns knowing and learning to accomplish these situated performances within the flow of daily market interactions.