PurposeThis study conceptualizes how the implementation of digitalization strategy acts as both an enabler and a catalyst for tensions within service ecosystems. It adopts a holistic, multi-actor perspective to articulate the complexity of ecosystem orchestration in the digital era. Design/methodology/approachThis study develops a conceptual model building on theoretical discussions regarding inter-organizational tensions and empowerment, synthesizing the implications of four critical aspects of digitalization strategies: digital resources, information architecture, digital platforms, and Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR). FindingsThe conceptual model illustrates that digitalization strategies enable value creation via resource and structural empowerment while simultaneously generating structural, psychological, and behavioral tensions. The study posits that the interplay between empowerments and tensions shapes governance and investment decisions, which influence how firms and their business partners collaboratively orchestrate service ecosystems when implementing new digitalization strategies. Originality/valueThis research develops a comprehensive conceptual model elucidating how different aspects of digitalization strategies act as both an enabler and a catalyst for tension within service ecosystems. A key theoretical contribution lies in identifying the strategic alignment between empowerment mechanisms and emerging tensions as the central mechanism for the digital transformation of service ecosystems. This perspective reframes strategy implementation as a continuous and iterative process of achieving and reinforcing this alignment. Furthermore, the study extends the literature on CDR by positioning it as a critical factor across the wider ecosystem rather than an initiative by a single firm.

In the contemporary business landscape, where business interactions are progressively migrating to virtual environments, the ability to convey human touch without physical proximity has emerged as a critical yet underexplored phenomenon. This study conceptualizes Digital Human Touch as a relational construct, exploring how empathy, authenticity, warmth, and care are enacted through digital channels. The study's research design encompasses dyadic buyer-supplier interviews conducted prior to, during, and following the onset of the pandemic with a large-scale analysis of customer reviews. The findings identify core dimensions of Digital Human Touch: digital authenticity, warmth and care, and openness in communication; during the pandemic also: forgiveness and tolerance, and reconciliation. The post-Covid-19 emergence of real-time connectedness was also identified. The findings indicate that Digital Human Touch fosters relational continuity and value co-creation. By challenging the assumption that human touch always requires physical interaction, this study contributes to the advancement of theory on relationship management.

Manufacturers in business-to-business (B2B) industries aim to gain a competitive edge by adopting the concept of customer centricity in their strategy. Acknowledging manufacturers' challenges in implementing new technologies, we showcase how digital product passports, augmented/virtual reality, smart products, and digital twins foster customer centricity. We classify these technologies based on their use context and introduce the CCTECHframework, which delineates the impact of (1) experiential, (2) performance-enhancing, and (3) automated technologies on customer-centric processes. This research explores the opportunities for utilizing specific emerging technologies to enhance four customer-centric processes: (1) interactive customer relationship management (discovering implicit needs), (2) customer integration (systematic involvement of customers in decisionmaking), (3) internal integration (aligning business activities around customer value), and (4) external integration (supply chain-level coordination to respond to customization required by customers). Further, we provide a technology roadmap for manufacturers and suggest a research agenda to guide future research.

While growing is interest in the use of social media influencers in digital marketing campaigns, little is known about virtual influencers and their impact on consumers and brands. Virtual influencers are becoming efficient advertising tools. Instead of being simple promoters, however, customers develop complex relationships with virtual influencers. This study seeks to uncover how social comparisons and parasocial relationships manifest within the virtual influencer phenomenon through the lived experiences of their followers. The findings indicate that perceiving virtual influencers' human-like traits induces some form of social comparison among followers that triggers several responses, such as jealousy, scorn, motivation/determination, and gratitude. Resutls also show that anthropomorphism plays a crucial role in the development of strong relationships between virtual influencers and their followers. Followers experience a paradoxical multidirectionality of parasocial relationships, whereby a co-occurrence of actual multidimensionality (community-based interactions between followers) and a strengthened perceived, but not actual, multidimensional interaction with virtual influencers has been observed. Drawing on followers' experiences, this study extends Husserl's lifeworld concept to digital lifeworlds, in which virtual influencers are embedded. This study contributes to influencer marketing by conceptualizing comparisons between humans and virtual influencers and how humans develop parasocial relationships with them.

Service research and business ethics literature intersect concerning the question of artificial intelligence (AI) service robot accountability. In financial services, there is a broad spectrum of potential ethical issues, from data usage to customer vulnerabilities. This article scrutinizes the impact of morality and where accountability resides in the use of AI service robots in financial services. To address this challenge, we discuss the role of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) for firms and illustrate how to implement a conceptual framework on the ethical implications of AI service robot applications, drawing on normative ethical theory. The framework elaborates on how the locus of morality (from human to AI agency) and moral intensity combine within context-specific AI service robot applications, and how this might influence associated accountability. We provide examples of AI robots’ use for different purposes, differentiating between four 'accountability clusters': (1) professional norms, (2) business responsibility, (3) inter-institutional normativity, and (4) supra-territorial regulations cluster. We also discuss the CDR implications in different clusters. Ethical implications of using AI service robots and associated accountability challenges are relevant for a network of actors—from customers and designers to firms and the government. Implementation of the framework incorporates a range of internal and external stakeholders that firms need to consider. We also provide a CDR roadmap to incorporate a time perspective and to inform implementation efforts.

This study examines the adversarial dynamics that emerge when service firms assess that manufacturers' servitization initiatives pose an existential risk to their survival as independent organizations. Adopting an industrial networks perspective, this investigation explores how service firms respond to manufacturers' servitization initiatives that threaten to disintermediate them. The study explores how Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul firms (MROs) in the aviation industry respond to servitization initiated by Original Equipment Manufacturing firms (OEMs). Empirically, interviews with 49 experienced managers were conducted in the service network to understand their strategic pathways. Their responses reveal that MROs can resist servitization by strengthening their relationships with airlines or developing service-led advanced services. Alternatively, MROs can support OEMs' servitization by becoming subcontractors or licensed resource integrators. This study shows that servitization depends on the orchestration of service network actors with differing interests, making it contingent and multilateral.

SMEs engage in product innovation despite their inherent resource constraints, lack of financial slack, and the under-development of competitively viable strategic configurations around the globe. While progress has been made in identifying the antecedents and capabilities attributed to successful innovation outcomes and the performance of these firms, there remain disparate and often paradoxical observations on the factors that affect SME innovation performance across geographies (i.e. developed vs developing countries) and operational contexts (R&D intensity and quality management practices). This study collected data from 241 resource-constrained small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a developing country (Ghana) to contribute to this debate. The results of structural equation modeling show that quality management mediates the relationship between R&D intensity and product innovation. The results also reveal the effects of knowledge integration and financial slack on the relationship between R&D intensity and product innovation, with a high level of knowledge integration enhancing the effect but a high financial slack hinders it. This study sheds light on a broader range of contextual and financial variables when seeking contingencies of SME product innovation performance within theory and practice.

The sharing economy platforms facilitate collaboration across geographical boundaries and promote service innovation by reshaping traditional business networks. This study takes a Social Capital Theory perspective on how Social Capital (SC) is created on professional sharing economy platforms, with particular attention to the creative services industry. Our in-depth qualitative investigation draws on 35 interviews with freelance designers and platform clients based in 17 different countries. The study demonstrates that SC created outside sharing economy platforms is not readily transferred to these platforms, which represents a major difference from the dynamics of SC in more traditional settings. Furthermore, SC transfer between platforms is difficult. Building platform-specific SC ‘from scratch’ requires a significant effort and is highly dependent on reputation systems, in the form of ratings and reviews. We argue that the platforms’ reputation systems force members to become ‘slaves’ to ensuring their star ratings and reviews are as good as possible. In addition, we explore how platform members learn to build SC on the platforms beyond ratings and reviews. Overall, the study contributes to academic discussions on opportunities and challenges for service innovation within the sharing economy and introduces the application of Social Capital Theory to the context of sharing economy platforms.

Business, management, and business ethics literature pay little attention to the topic of AI robots. The broad spectrum of potential ethical issues pertains to using driverless cars, AI robots in care homes, and in the military, such as Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems. However, there is a scarcity of in-depth theoretical, methodological, or empirical studies that address these ethical issues, for instance, the impact of morality and where accountability resides in AI robots’ use. To address this dearth, this study offers a conceptual framework that interpretively develops the ethical implications of AI robot applications, drawing on descriptive and normative ethical theory. The new framework elaborates on how the locus of morality (human to AI agency) and moral intensity combine within context-specific AI robot applications, and how this might influence accountability thinking. Our theorization indicates that in situations of escalating AI agency and situational moral intensity, accountability is widely dispersed between actors and institutions. ‘Accountability clusters’ are outlined to illustrate interrelationships between the locus of morality, moral intensity, and accountability and how these invoke different categorical responses: (i) illegal, (ii) immoral, (iii) permissible, and (iv) supererogatory pertaining to using AI robots. These enable discussion of the ethical implications of using AI robots, and associated accountability challenges for a constellation of actors—from designer, individual/organizational users to the normative and regulative approaches of industrial/governmental bodies and intergovernmental regimes.

This study contributes to the nascent literature on luxury experiences by focusing on a significant yet understudied segment of consumers responsible for a large share of luxury purchases. Seven in-depth interviews with ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs), who represent the world's economic elite, and ten in-depth interviews with managers of top luxury brands reveal important features of the elite luxury experience. Not only do UHNWIs seek extraordinary, exclusive, and bespoke luxury experiences, but they are also driven by status affirmation, feelings of entitlement, and the need for distinction. They also experience a privacy paradox, with a preference for 'selective publicity'. Our findings demonstrate UHNWIs' strong disengagement from others - even other UHNWIs - facilitatedby elite luxury experiences. This study is the first to shed light on the idiosyncrasies of the elite luxury experience by combining data from UHNWIs and managers who facilitate luxury experiences. The study offers implications for managing luxury experiences directed at UHNWIs.

Two of the most disruptive changes in today's business markets are servitization and digitalization. Their increasing convergence into digital servitization leads to tensions both within and between organizations. The authors investigate such intra- and interorganizational tensions by applying a paradox theory lens. The study draws on 56 depth interviews and multiple site visits from two cases in the aerospace and maritime industries. Linked to the paradoxes of organizing, learning, belonging, and performing, eight tensions emerge from the findings. The intra-organizational tensions include digitally enabled control, digital upkeep, professional identity, and performance priorities. In turn, the interorganizational tensions comprise platform-based coopetition, information superabundance, organizational identity, and data utilization. For practitioners working with digital services, this study suggests an audit of tensions to inform continued formulations of a mitigation strategy.

This study addresses the issue of unintentionality in market shaping with special regard to bifurcation points, representational practices, and shared mental models. Based on three case studies of touring exhibitions, we found that the intended outcomes of market shaping actions are potentially surpassed by actual outcomes, far beyond the original goals by creating novel forms of markets through feedback loops that reshape the very definition of what the role of an organisation is, broadening the market, bringing new stakeholders, and creating new market segments, questioning the value elements of a market offering. We explain these outcomes by a model of energy change in a system that receives new parties and resources which in interaction reach a bifurcation point that gives way to the emergence of new, potentially multiple, shared mental models that deliver new object representations, which explain how market shaping actions result in certain unintentional outcomes in coexistence with the intentional outcomes initially planned.

This study investigates the contemporary role of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in business exchanges through buyers' signaling of observable and unobservable supplier characteristics on the Alibaba e-commerce platform. Utilizing a qualitative pre-study of 20 interviews (five buyer-supplier dyads with two interviews per firm) and more than 8000 buyer reviews on Alibaba, we identify characteristic patterns of this type of B2B eWOM. Signaling Theory and Social Exchange Theory underpin the empirical investigation. To enable further conceptualization, the study distinguishes between online B2B reviews based on the extent to which they are controlled by organizational partners. Unlike some other forms of B2B reviews, reviews on Alibaba are uncontrolled and comprise a form of eWOM. Findings indicate that the relational patterns of B2B eWOM shared on Alibaba can be aggregated into three categories: human touch, responsiveness, and resilience. Besides these new categories, the importance of product/service quality has been confirmed. Through Alibaba reviews, buyers' signals are sent not only to suppliers as feedback, but also to other prospective buyers to influence their purchase decisions. Our study aims to contribute to the B2B literature on eWOM and signaling in business relationships. By showing that human touch occurs even in online-only buyer-supplier relationships, the study provides evidence that bonding, the development of mutuality, and relationship intimacy in buyer-supplier relationships does not always require in-person contact. Managerial implications are offered with a focus on the signaling of unobservable qualities, such as human touch, with the help of B2B eWOM.

Actors in business networks often struggle to integrate their resources and bridge knowledge boundaries, which makes shared understanding difficult to establish and sustain. We develop the concept of interfirm problem representation (IFPR) to illustrate how networks of multidisciplinary teams create shared understanding and establish collective decisions in their day-to-day negotiations and joint problem-solving. IFPR is defined as an arrangement of localized artefacts or boundary objects that are jointly created by team members, and continuously adapted to facilitate mutual agreement and shared understanding in their daily conversations. We draw evidence from the UK construction industry to illustrate how team members from different organizations and knowledge domains manage their resource dependencies by creating IFPR as a common frame of reference to guide the implementation of their shared goals. Our data collection activities involve the observation of 3 different construction project teams over a period of 11 months. During the period, a total of 43 project team meetings were attended and 32 face-to-face interviews conducted across the 3 project teams. Findings from this study advance the discussion on subjective cognition and inter-subjective representations in networks by illustrating how diverse cognitive views and knowledge boundaries of network actors are synergized through an objectified system of representation. This enables us to offer important theoretical implications related to prior research on knowledge sharing and shared cognition. Our discussion highlights how actors, engaging in a shared activity that is extended over a period of time, collectively navigate different social contingencies while utilizing IFPR as a socio-historical artefact. IFPR enables network actors to critically review past mistakes to achieve improved collaborative outcomes.

Previous research has established the benefits of using social media in support of engagement in business-to-business settings. Yet the study of problems that arise from social media use in business relationships remains limited. Utilizing a dyadic perspective, this study addresses the gap by focusing on tensions in buyer-supplier relationships that arise from social media use. Findings present three dualistic tensions: active engagement anticipated by suppliers versus passive monitoring practices of the buyers; increased transparency through business-to-business social media versus invisibility; as well as tensions between local versus international business-to-business social media engagement practices. The study draws on 52 semi-structured in-depth interviews with senior managers who work in relevant positions at manufacturing firms based in China. By identifying characteristic tensions pertaining to business-to-business social media, this study aims to contribute to research on the ‘dark side’ of business relationships as well as to literature on business-to-business social media engagement.

Purpose Managing attractiveness is a constant challenge to mobilize relationship-specific investments, especially in a business environment increasingly enhanced by social media (SM) activities. There is limited knowledge on how SM activities contribute to supplier attractiveness, so decisions about strategizing with SM and consequent resource allocations become highly uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to examine how suppliers’ SM activities influence supplier attractiveness. Design/methodology/approach Altogether, 57 senior managers were interviewed: 32 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with senior managers in strategic decision-making roles regarding SM on the supplier side, along with 20 senior managers responsible for purchasing or looking after supplier development; one-to-one interviews were complemented by a focus group with 5 senior managers on the buyer side. Findings The study reveals an inverse U-shaped relationship between the intensity of the supplier’s SM activity and its attractiveness and offers a set of propositions about the influence of SM on supplier attractiveness, with special regard to the perceived risks of increased transparency and becoming “too social” on SM. Practical implications The study highlights SM management results for supplier attractiveness and their impact areas on business growth and supply chain development. Originality/value This paper provides in-depth insights into the role of SM in managing supplier attractiveness. Various effects of SM activities are identified that aim to contribute to the body of literature on supplier attractiveness as well as SM management in buyer–supplier relationships.

Product-Service Systems (PSS) composed of physical products and digital services are emerging as an important new product category.In this paper we suggest that the established metaphor of "layering" is insufficient to capture the diverse ways in which PSS can be differentiated for, and by, consumers.Responding to this issue, we develop a new framework that centres on the distinction between different modes of horizontal product differentiation, including static, dynamic, compository and user-journey differentiation.Using a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, the framework is applied to two case studies of prototype PSS that use augmented reality to connect physical goods to digital services.While at first sight augmented reality would seem to directly embody the traditional notion of layering, the analysis of these case studies confirms the presence of multiple forms of horizontal product differentiation as well as the flexible composition of physical and digital elements.Building on this analysis, we argue that the uncovered aspects of differentiation should be investigated in the management literature and that the existing metaphor of layers should be superseded by a more suitable one.

PurposeThis paper aims to conceptualize corporate reference management as a strategic signaling activity in business networks. While research has extensively outlined how firms develop and maintain social capital through business-to-business (B2B) relationships, less is known about how they signal their participation in business networks to develop this social capital. Therefore, this paper conceptualizes B2B references, in particular corporate online references (COR), as a tool through which firms “borrow” attractiveness from their business network. Through the lens of structural social capital theory, COR is shown to capture advantages related to interconnectedness between firms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports on a two-step qualitative and quantitative research design. First, the authors undertook a qualitative study that reports on the COR practices of senior business managers. A quantitative study then uses social network analysis (SNA) to audit a digital business network comprising 1,098 firms in a metropolitan area of the UK, referencing to each other through their corporate websites using COR.FindingsThe analyses find that COR practices contribute to building structural social capital in networks through strategic signaling. Firms do so by managing B2B references to craft strategic signals, using five steps: requesting, granting, curating, coding and decoding references. While the existing literature on business marketing portrays reference management as a routine and operational management practice, this investigation conceptualizes reference management, in particular COR, as a strategic activity.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use SNA to represent B2B references in the form of COR as a network, which overlaps with (but is not entirely identical to) the business network. Further, the study re-conceptualizes reference management as a strategic signaling activity that leverages the firm’s participation in business networks to build structural social capital by borrowing attractiveness of prestigious business partners that leverages existing structural social capital. Finally, the paper coins and conceptualizes COR as an exemplar of referencing management and offers propositions for further research.

This study addresses how non-profit organisations like art galleries participate in co-creating value to visitors (customers), providers, and other stakeholders, and how these processes can be conceptualised within a service logic framework. We evaluate how an art gallery touring exhibition in regional Australia contributed to customer value, drawing on data collected in 2014–2016 from publications and websites, and interviews with staff of art galleries and arts organisations. Our findings illuminated four forms of value creation: financial, knowledge sharing, social and cultural, and professional value. Country art galleries have strong visitor orientation and employ co-creation processes focused on enhancing visitors’ experience, aligned with government directions on Indigenous understanding and objectives of local Indigenous art communities. However, customer value exchange is not well understood. The lack of marketing research expertise and usable visitor data is a barrier to value creation.

• 'Necessary but not sufficient' conditions can be identified in tourism research. • Necessary condition analysis finds conditions without which an outcome cannot occur. • Necessary condition analysis discerns levels of conditions necessary for an outcome. • This study demonstrates the necessity of convenience for perceived utility in tourism. • Some future applications of necessary condition analysis in tourism are suggested.