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Abstract The implications of business actor engagement and industry-specific platform development within business-to-business (B2B) contexts requires more research. While existing literature provides some guidance on common engagement factors and their impact on value outcomes, it primarily focuses on consumer markets, overlooking the complexities of B2B markets. Recent studies highlight the need for mid-range conceptualizations of business actor engagement, emphasizing engagement’s role beyond the customer perspective. Understanding how responding actors perceive initiators in the BAE process is crucial, as it influences the overall engagement and value outcomes. This study addresses this gap by examining how the behavior and perceived role of initiating actors (in the study; Swedish real estate firms developing sustainability services for commercial tenants) impact responding actors’ engagement. Four perceived roles are identified and conceptualized: the diligent, negligent, steward, and dominant initiating actor. The results also offer insights into BAE role dynamics and suggest that digital platform components serve as business actor engagement role amplifier, shaping engagement and platform development

Purpose: This study aims to offer a mid-range theory conceptualization of factors central to understanding and facilitating business actor engagement (BAE). Reports on a study of real estate companies and their sustainable development goal (SDG) driven business initiatives. The aim is to identify the factors that need to be in place to facilitate positive engagement amongst actors in business-to-business (B2B) settings. Design/methodology/approach: A case study of real estate companies (landlords of business premises) and their business customers (tenants of offices and warehouses) – comprising interviews and workshops – offer insights related to the factors that need to be in place to facilitate BAE types and outcomes. Findings: The identified central factors of BAE – needed to understand and facilitate positive engagement to unfold – are the actors’ perception of: willingness (to act), resourcefulness (to contribute and solve issues) and influence (to affect decisions) regarding solutions related to the business initiative at hand. Failing to facilitate these factors may result in negative outcomes of BAE where “engagement” merely constitutes perceived obligations and responsibilities. Research limitations/implications: The study offers theoretical and managerial insights on how to manage the factors needed for BAE. It also sheds light on how actors can use SDG-driven business initiatives to achieve sustainability goals. Originality/value: It contributes to the concept of BAE, by emphasizing the dynamics of engagement, from the motivational and behavioral dimensions specific to B2B settings. It offers insights how to managerially cogovern rather than control BAE. It presents central factors needed to include and capacitate customers, facilitating successful implementations of SDG-driven business initiatives to reduce absent or negative outcomes. 

Theoverall aim is to address the role of internal embeddedness in subsidiary’sinfluence on strategic decisions in the multinational enterprise andspecifically discuss how the internal production network and the subsidiary management’sinterpersonal relationships facilitate and impede its potential influence.  The two dimensions of internal embeddednessare scrutinized individually and then put together in a conceptualframework.  The internal productionnetwork is made up of where and what the subsidiary do, i.e. their activitiesand how these activities are related to the sister subsidiaries’ activities (astructural dimension), and the interpersonal network is based upon thesubsidiary management’s “voice” and standing in the larger MNC. The papers tentativeconclusion – presented as a conceptual model – is that the internal productionnetwork is the baseline for the degree of strategic influence a subsidiary haswhilst the subsidiary management’s interpersonal network can extend thisinfluence.

The theoretical research stream that depicts multinational companies (MNCs) as networked organizations has offered new insights on contemporary enterprises’ way of functioning. However, the majority of the research has focused on external embeddedness, that is, MNC subsidiaries’ local business relationships, and its impact on subsidiary organizational performance. This conceptual chapter addresses the lack of research focusing on internal embeddedness, that is, subsidiary relationships with headquarters and sister subsidiaries. Internal embeddedness is discussed from two dimensions: the internal production network and the MNC manager’s social network. The characteristics of each dimension and how they relate to earlier research, leads to a number of theoretical propositions. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how external and internal embeddedness relate, as well as how they may impact the subsidiary’s (organizational) performance.

Firms are increasingly using forms of AI to serve stakeholders across various business functions, resulting in both positive and negative outcomes. Stakeholder theory explains how firms create and destroy value via their stakeholder encounters, making it an ideal foundation for understanding AI deployment on firm-level perfor-mance. As AI continues to evolve, both when it comes to the activities and roles it takes and the stakeholders it affects, the AI-stakeholder framework developed herein identifies and situates key managerial decisions related to the adoption and deployment of AI that drive the firm's likelihood of creating or destroying value through stakeholder encounters. The AI-stakeholder framework focuses on stakeholder justice and is supported by testable propositions about the conditions most likely to affect the outcomes of incorporating AI into business processes. The framework also supports future research and practical managerial guidance by articulating the challenges and potential of AI for managing stakeholder encounters.

In different ways and degrees, companies and organizations of today embrace the promises of productivity, knowledge development, and interorganizational connectivity that contemporary information technology (IT) offers. Whether the motives are internal needs or external demands, the goal is increased effi ciency or effectiveness, and whether the argumentation emphasizes added capability or decreased costs, companies have made IT an integral part of today’s business world. This may be manifested in the form of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems from SAP, knowledge management systems (KMS) from IBM, offi ce packages from Microsoft, or network solutions from Cisco, but organizations likewise face a challenging integration of IT with their established business. By now, many organizations have already passed several cycles of IT implementation, and their current challenges are thus often a matter of migration rather than clean-slate implementations. 

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been widely diffused and it getsmanifested through the stakeholder relationships a firm. We do in this pa-per investigate CSR certificates and their impact on the adopting firm. Weexplore real estate firms – a conservative industry that traditionally havehad a very strong financial focus where their market strategy has followeda strict goods-dominant (G-D) logic but where some firms changes theirmindshift towards service-dominant (S-D) logic thinking. Thus, we build onmultiple sources of data to explore Swedish real estate firms and studytheir approaches to CSR. Our results offer some insights in the character-istics of firms with green environmental certification systems and it has im-plications for how theories on value cocreation needs to be developed.

Research shows that CSR certification motives span from being symbolic to substantive. Prior studies have mainly focused on the differences between firms that hold and do not hold CSR certificates. This study explores if the extent of CSR certification is related to different business logic amongst firms who hold CSR certificates. The study utilizes full sample data from the Swedish commercial real estate industry to analyze the variance in motives and performance among firms with CSR certificates. The results indicate that firms that have a substantive CSR commitment have a business logic that entails a holistic and long-term perspective on both financial and CSR performance. However, substantive CSR commitment comes with greater staffing costs and lower financial returns as opposed to those of firms that obtain CSR certificates based on symbolic motives.

This thesis deals with how companies utilize their enterprise systems in their business relationships. The study’s starting point is enterprise systems that basically are standardised information systems that the company can acquire from software vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Enterprise systems aim to integrate and manage all the company’s data and it can also be linked to its business partners.

The thesis contains two case studies of how a focal company utilizes its enterprise system in their business relationships. To accomplish this, an analytical framework based upon the combination of an information systems (IS) and a business relationship perspective is developed and applied. The IS perspective follows an ‘ensemble view of technology’ approach which describes the use of information systems as embedded in a both technical and social context. The business relationship perspective is founded in empirical studies of industrial companies. Basically, business relationships are unique and based on the companies’ exchanges. It also involves behavioural elements as trust, commitment, adaptations and interdependencies between the partners.

The two case studies cover the business relationships between ten companies and the character of the studied business relationships varies. The results show that enterprise systems are mainly focused on the companies’ internal activities. The exchanges in the business relationships are either carried out without the enterprise system or are supported by some complementary information system. Enterprise systems are thus mainly seen as production systems. This can be explained by the heritage from former material and resource planning (MRP) systems. An alternative explanation can be that business relationships are unique and require continuous adaptations and a mutual orientation. Enterprise systems require structural data rendering them difficult to use for the activities of a business relationship. The users then develop other, individual, applications that handle what is needed in their ongoing business. The threat is that information can be lost on a company level. The challenge is therefore to investigate the complementary information systems functions to see if it is possible to extend the enterprise system to include them. To be worth its epithet, the enterprise system must facilitate all the business activities found in the companies business relationships.

Purpose – Enterprise systems have been presented as a “dream come true” with a seamless integration of business data through a common database and software modules that can be customized to the companies’ different functions. However, research shows that companies’ utilization of enterprise systems is limited, and that internal processes are prioritized. This paper analyses how well enterprise systems capture the business network in which an industrial company is involved.   Design/methodology/approach – European multinational companies and some of their partners have been followed through case studies between 2003 and 2010. The pattern-matching analysis has been supported by a theoretical framework that depicts industrial companies as engaged in business relationships in a network setting.   Findings – The results show that the company’s relationship-oriented activities are badly captured by the enterprise system. The study highlight limitations that future enterprise systems need to address if they are to be able to offer the company a better insight into its business network.   Originality/value – The traditionally internal focus on enterprise systems means that important business information transcending inter-organizational activities will be missed. To be worthy of the name enterprise system, more customer- and supplier-oriented activities need to be supported and captured.

To understand the impact of an enterprise system on a company’s business, an approach is proposed in which the company’s business relationships are seen as a valuable resource that needs to be managed. Extensive studies of mainly industrial companies’ business with each other carried out by researchers belonging to the IMP Group (see www.impgroup.org) have shown that the companies have a limited number of long-term business relationships with what are considered important customers and suppliers (Ford, Gadde, Håkansson, & Snehota, 2003; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995). These business relationships often involve several people with different business functions, given that the exchanged product or service might be complex and that it is often adapted to the customer’s requirements. This matching process between a buyer and a seller is sometimes discussed in terms of homogeneous markets (Alderson, 1965; Penrose, 1959) where the exchanged value needs to be scrutinized and negotiated by the partners involved. Thus, prior to a business exchange of the product and service for a negotiated price, there will be information exchanges as well as personal interactions between different employees from both the selling and buying companies. This chapter addresses the research question of how do enterprise systems support the business activities that take place in a business relationship? An underlying assumption is that the enterprise system can help the participating staff by supporting the execution of their business activities. The following chapter presents lessons from case studies of two large companies’ business relationships with customer and partner companies. The aim of the chapter is to offer an insight in how enterprise systems are used in an interorganizational setting, with an emphasis on marketers and salesmen. It also shows the challenges that companies aiming for a fully integrated enterprise system are facing. 

Purpose: To explore the emergent characteristics of IT portfolios in business-to-business (B2B) firms. The goal is to develop a model that clarifies what interaction capabilities B2B firms develop and to what form of IT this corresponds to.

Design/methodology/approach: We apply an a priori conceptual framework that is based on the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group's theoretical focus on business relationships. The framework depicts the business relationship as dealing with uncertainty and equivocality as well as building and upholding reliance and trust. We utilize a case study approach involving a focal firm and ten of its customers and suppliers. Building on 60 interviews, field observations and archival data, we analyze interviewee responses and the complementary data to evaluate the role of IT in supporting or automated various aspects of organizational relationships.

Findings: Results show how "high tech" and "high touch" relate to different interaction capabilities, which firms develop based on the characteristics of their business relationships. Although IT is associated with "high tech" and "high touch" interaction capabilities, some forms of IT are deployed to support the former, while other forms support the later. Both forms of technology-enabled interaction capabilities require investment, and firms must balance investment costs against the value created by improved interaction capabilities.

Originality/value: Our findings emphasize the interorganizational perspective (dyadic or network) rather than a solely organizational perspective for understanding IT portfolio development. This perspective is presented through an emergent tech-touch interaction capability model that shows how B2B firms can align their IT portfolio based on the specific characteristics of their business relationships.

With the widespread transformation of information into digital form through-out society - firms and organisations are embracing this development to adopt multiple types of IT to increase internal efficiency and to achieve external visi-bility and effectiveness - we have now reached a position where there is data in abundance and the challenge is to manage and make use of it fully. This book addresses this new managerial situation, the post-digitalisation era, and offers novel perspectives on managing the digital landscape. The topics span how the post-digitalisation era has the potential to renew organisations, markets and society. The chapters of the book are structured in three topical sections but can also be read individually. The chapters are struc-tured to offer insights into the developments that take place at the intersection of the management, information systems and computer science disciplines. It features more than 70 researchers and managers as collaborating authors in 23 thought-provoking chapters. Written for scholars, researchers, students and managers from the manage-ment, information systems and computer science disciplines, the book presents a comprehensive and thought-provoking contribution on the challenges of man-aging organisations and engaging in global markets when tools, systems and data are abundant.

In this chapter, the editors introduce the background to the chapters and the contemporary context. Over the past few decades, over 60 authors of the book’s 23 chapters have witnessed the consolidation of global IT firms, increased reliance on cloud solutions and virtualization and increased sophistication of technologies adopted and used by organisations. This change can be described as the result of digital transformation. This introductory chapter provides an overview of the topics and industries that the chapters touch on. Learning from the experience and by example, as in these chapters, allows established ways of thinking and doing to be challenged. This is likely to be crucial for successful management and information technology after digital transformation.

Today’s companies can take advantage of state-of-the art information technology (IT) as enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) systems, business intelligence software and web-based services to facilitate their business. Many of these technologies are general in their design – i.e. they are of-the-shelf solutions available to a wider customer group. With­in the information sys­tems (IS) discip­line this has lead to the managerial advice that companies should evalu­ate the IT-vendors prevail­ing market position and the prospect of their future (taking in consideration e.g. the vendors solven­cy). This paper is empirically focusing ERP systems – company wide information systems that comes with a standard set of pre-defined procedures called ‘best practices’ – and it presents two cases that illustrates how these ERP systems inherent the best practices that the IT-provider has developed in cooperation with its prevailing customers. Following the Euro­pean theory on markets as network, i.e. an approach developed within the IMP Group, a alternative managerial advice would be to assess the vendor’s business network. Thus, this paper puts forth the later approach and discusses how a company contri­butes respectively benefits from selecting an IT-provider that develops enter­prise systems for their respectively industrial sector. The paper puts forth two cases where one illustrates how a company is involved in the deve­lop­ment of a IT-vendors best practices and the other case illustrates how a company gets best practices by looking at the IT-vendors customers. The two illustrating case studies are carried out at Kanthal AB, a company within the Sandvik Group, and at CH Industry AB, a small supplier to Volvo Construction Equipment. Whilst the larger company Kanthal had to go through a process of software custo­mization to get the adequate functions in their ERP system CH Industry has instead gone with the standard package. The customization that Kanthal required has later become one of the IT provider’s features, i.e. a new best practice, some­thing that other customers can benefit from. CH Industry has also selected the same complex and compre­hen­sive ERP system as Kanthal even if their need, as a rather small company, should be of another nature. CH Industry has though selected a competitive standard package and they motivate their choice of ERP system by relating to the IT-pro­vider’s customer base. Implicit CH Industry understands that the IT-provider’s customer network will mean that their ERP system will be offered continuous improvements and upgrades, and they will thereby getting state-of-the-art best practices even in the future. The paper concludes with discussing the interconnectedness of best practices – whilst Kanthal are an active partner in the deve­lop­ment of a set of best practices, CH Industry is a company that benefits from prevailing best practices. The implica­tion of the cases is that a company benefits from an awareness of its IT-vendor’s wider business network. Comp­anies needs to – as well as considering the IT provider’s solvency, market position, and evaluations of the technology as advised by managerial infor­ma­tion system theories – evaluate the IT-provider’s prevailing customers and their business proce­dures and preferences.

Consumer-oriented firms (B2C) have grasped the benefits of modern integrated information technology (IT) systems as CRM and web-shops that allow them to capture, store, and manage consumer data to fulfill their expectations and needs on an individual and customized basis. This means that firms acting on consumer markets can use ‘high tech’ for ‘high touch’, i.e. using IT to met the consumer on a personal level. Based on the findings in a large case study spanning multiple business relationships (dyads) between buying and selling industrial firms we propose that the high tech/high touch logic is different at industrial markets (B2B). Here, industrial firms strive towards an increased use of interorganizational integrated IT systems (high tech) to lower interaction costs and at the same time increase the reliance in their business relationships. This is at the same time challenged by the employees’ preference for human interaction (high touch) as a mean to uphold trust and solve what they perceive as equivocalities. While consumer market’s high tech is based on the collection of consumer behavior high tech in industrial markets is much more a two-way street were partner firms work for integrated IT systems at the same time as the interacting employees appreciate the social dimension of business. This explorative study indicate that high tech and high touch in industrial markets is more a case of ‘either or’ rather that ‘and’ as in consumer markets. The study is explorative and presents a number of propositions that can be used for further studies.

The use of an information system (IS) can be studied as a result of all the efforts that an organization has put on the introduction of IS, as for example change management, user training, support training and proper technical infrastructure. The description takes its starting point in the organization per se, whilst the one in this paper is external. In this paper, a complementary perspective is offered that can explain the final use of an IS, illustrated by three empirical papers. The use of an IS can be a result of the interorganizational influences as customers, suppliers or other stakeholders. The paper shows that the external environment has a direct effect on how the user experiences an IS and uses it.

Purpose – This study aims to investigates the possible gap between the logic of these information technology (IT) systems and industrial firms’ marketing practices. Industrial firms rely extensively on IT systems for their business. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the contemporary marketing practice (CMP) model, which depicts firms’ marketing practice as ranging from transactional to more relational and networked-based, the logic of IT systems and how users in industrial firms adopt them are amended to create an extended model. The extended model is used to analyze an in-depth case based on 63 interviews regarding one industrial firm’s business with customers and suppliers and how IT is utilized in this setting. Findings – Results show that industrial firms’ relationship-oriented business is poorly supported by currently used IT systems. This gap between the IT systems, which are transaction-focused, and industrial firms’ marketing practice, which is relationship-based, has severe effects on adoption and efficiency of IT systems. The marketers prefer local, non-integrated, IT with limited usefulness on an overall firm level while resisting the firms’ comprehensive IT systems. This forms an IT–marketing gap given that current IT does not match the marketing practice of relationship-oriented industrial firms. Originality/value – This study applies an extended CMP model in a novel way focusing one industrial firm, its customers and suppliers and the IT used in this setting. The study shows that all marketing practices of the CMP model can be found in one firm’s business, albeit one category, i.e. interaction marketing (a relationship approach), is dominating. The use of the CMP framework offers new and valuable insights into the fundamental cause to the industrial marketers’ limited use of integrated IT.

This study investigates how industrial companies’ IT infrastructure match their applied marketing approach. The supporting theoretical framework is based upon the contemporary marketing practice (CMP) model that depicts companies as spanning from transactional to more relational and networked. This is supported by theories on the logic of IT systems and how users in industrial companies adopt them. The study is based upon two longitudinal subsequent case studies of a multinational company’s business with influential customers. The analysis shows that the utilized IT systems mainly follow efficiency logic that is useful for individual business transactions. However, the form of complex industrial business that industrial companies carries out are often relationship based and sometimes even incorporating the adjacent business network. Thus, there is a IT-marketing gap given that contemporary IT does not match the need the marketing practice of a modern industrial company.

This study examines four major Swedish banks' internationalization process patterns during the period 1961-2010. The study complements earlier studies by also considering the banks' levels of market commitment. One objective is to determine if 'Tit for tat'-behaviour seen in earlier studies of Swedish banks still prevails after the deregulation. Adding to earlier studies, this study also considers the level of market activities and commitments. A secondary purpose is to examine how the financial crisis has affected the banks with reference to the banks' internationalization patterns. The empirical study is based on archival data on the studied banks' foreign operations. The results show that the banks' behaviour follows 'Tit for tat'-behaviour but that the internationalization has accelerated after the deregulation, hence being carried out with 'big steps' rather than small steps. The analysis also shows that the mimetic behaviour is complemented by other types of internationalization behaviours. The differences in bank internationalization also mean that the effect of a financial crisis varies depending on how the banks have internationalized.

In this paper, we elaborate service-dominant (S-D) logic’s concept of resource integration as a premise for customer value co-creation and service provision. Following S-D logic, resource integration that results in customer value is dependent on institutions and institutional arrangements. S-D logic’s fifth axiom states: “Value co-creation is coordinated through actor-generated institutions and institutional arrangements” (Vargo & Lusch, 2016, page 18). We report on three case study findings to offer contextualized explanations that seek to join current conceptualizations with solid explanatory power. These cases span from the digitalization of music industry, sustainable strategies in the real estate industry, and insights from an innovation lab for open innovations. The empirical renderings are utilized to help to explain the institutional arrangements that are at play. The results show that the potential boundaries of, how, and which resources can be utilized and integrated are to great extent related to the perceived available “solution space” (von Hippel, 2001) or “opportunity space” (Normann, 2001) offered by the institutional and practice-related boundaries of the context (Ridell, Röndell, & Sörhammar, 2012). By integrating the ideas of a solution space and opportunity space with the later rendering of institutional arrangements as denominator for value creation, we contribute to the current mid-range theory development of S-D logic as well as a better understanding of value co-creation in practice. The introduced concept of institutional solution space combines the idiosyncratic needs of actors with the perceived – i.e., institutional and socio-material-derived – opportunities associated with resources. Thus, it offers a bridge between the abstract concepts of resource integration, value-in-context, and institutional arrangements (Vargo & Lusch, 2016). © 2018, Academy of Marketing Science.

We witness a growing interest in the marketing area regarding the relationship between marketing theory and marketing practice, the usefulness of marketing models, or how firms carry out their marketing practice. The business discipline has since long taken an interest in the practical use of theories, i.e., as stated by Kurt Levin (1951): “There is nothing as practical as a good theory.” However, the theory-practice linkage has to a limited degree been transferred into the classroom, and only a few studies have so far focused on the effects of bringing practice into the classroom. There are some notable examples of nursing and medicine studies and disciplines that are known for applying reflective practice. However, there is a lack of this research within management and marketing literature. A common way of achieving practice-related assignments is to bring the students into the field, but what happens when you bring the field to the classroom? This can, for example, be done by introducing practice into the classroom by involving practitioners – i.e., executives, managers, consultants, and so forth – in student assignments. Well managed, this means that (a) the student gets to engage in a real-world-like setting and (b) that the student can reflect upon both his or her action and all the nuances of the (practical) event. In this study, we aim to contribute to our understanding regarding the effect of bringing marketing practitioners into the class-learning situation by (i) investigating how such learning experiences affect the students learning and (ii) what kind of learning the practitioner-based activity gives. Our goal is to shed some light on what kind of learning process “practice” in the classroom leads to and what kind of obstacles and benefits there are. We do this by carrying out an explorative study following grounded theory. Our research is inspired by grounded theory and it complements current marketing and management pedagogy studies. While working with cases allows the teacher to design a learning opportunity with clear intended learning outcome (ILO), or using simulation tools, these are artificial situations that do not reflect all the nuances of a “real-life” business situations. Internships do offer the student these nuances, but they are hard to connect to specific ILOs. We focus on a learning methodology that integrates the best of these two practice-oriented methods – i.e., having clear ILOs and bringing business atmosphere into the classroom. The study span 60 individual written student reflections and the results indicate different aspects of the students’ learning process. We coded the students’ renderings and categorized the findings into second-order constructs. Thereafter, the results were compiled, through axial coding, into a conceptual model that should be used for further development and exploration. The model indicates that learning is not only related to the student’s qualities and form of learning triggers; it is also moderated by the student’s emotions and how well the assignment is carried out and understood. The study is a novel attempt to increase our knowledge of how this type of assignments affects the students as well as lead to the fulfillment of ILOs.

Real estate companies are central actors in the development of a smart city. However, most industry participants are conservative and prefer to utilize established, often unintegrated, technologies rather than deploy newer technologies that would help achieve the goals of the smart city. To evaluate the potential of smart commercial real-estate (CRE) we studied a Swedish commercial real estate firm that has developed and deployed a technology-based self-service (TBSS) to help tenants reduce energy consumption. The study was grounded in the theoretical service-dominant (S-D) logic lexicon and our results suggest that for commercial real estate firms to successfully implement TBSS they need to enhance their competence in three areas: management of information technology, withinorganization and business-to-business networking skills. Further, these areas are inter-related and successful deployment of TBSS requires improvement in all three areas.

Contemporary services innovations regularly come embedded in both information technology (IT) and organizational arrangements. (Ostrom et al., 2015, page 127) capture this current trend: “The context in which service is delivered and experienced has, in many respects, fundamentally changed. Advances in technology, especially information technology, are leading to a proliferation of revolutionary services and changing how customers serve themselves before, during, and after purchase.” Research that especially focuses on the integration of technology in the service system has been labeled self-service technology (SST) and technology-based self-service (TBSS). Breidback et al. (2012) did further add that most services will be a mix of technology and human-based interaction, what they label “technology-enabled value co-creation.” Following this research stream, less high-tech and service-oriented companies will meet challenges when introducing innovative services given that these services both require technical know-how and a market-oriented mindset. By acknowledging the socio-technical and social-material aspects of current service innovation, it is possible to unbundle activities from the physical restraints and open up innovation opportunities, facilitating a more customized rebundling of the service innovation to facilitate enhanced customer value. The vast majority of TBSS studies have focused on consumer markets which partly can be explained by the fact that business-to-business (B2B) companies have been late adopters. The main reason can be that B2B markets to a higher degree are few-to-few rather than many-to-many markets, the substantial cost of partner specific investments, as well as the overall complex linkages and process in B2B relationships. While prior studies have seen TBSS as an addition in firms’ value proposition portfolio, this study puts an emphasis on considering the TBSS as an innovation in a conservative B2B market context. It adopts a service-dominant (S-D) logic perspective on innovation and puts forth the research questions: (a) What capabilities do firms need when developing TBSS innovations and (b) what sort of institutional work they engage in. The study is carried out as an explorative and longitudinal field study of Humlegården Fastigheter AB (a real estate firm that only have commercial tenants and that introduced a TBSS in 2012) and its suppliers and customers. Humlegården Fastigheter AB is a “Prime Mover” as they developed a TBSS in the real estate and facility industry where new services are rare. The results show how such firms will need to acquire and develop several capacities when striving for new value propositions. The study offers an emergent theory on how a TBSS innovation engages actors in the service ecosystem and pinpoints the forms of institutional work a focal actor needs to carry out to change the service ecosystem’s actors’ cognitive framework, current norms, as well as comply with regulations.

The traditional goods dominant logic lexicon assumes pre-specified and static roles of market participants. Fixed roles such as 'supplier' and 'customer' imply that value creation occurs between two parties (the dyad) and occurs in a specified direction (i.e., from a supplier to a customer). In contrast, service dominant logic suggests that markets are comprised of generic actors engaged-in bilateral actor-to-actor exchanges. However, the generic actor concept is not well developed in existing literature. We contribute to the literature by providing a typology of generic actor roles and identifying multiple types of value that may be co-created in a network. To empirically ground the concepts and generate propositions, we follow the development and deployment of a self-service technology, the Green Fingerprint, in the Swedish commercial real estate industry. Within a service network we find that generic actors assume several roles simultaneously, and may perceive multiple forms of co-created value. Theoretically, this paper offers a basis for further study of the generic actor and types of value, as well as an understanding of how network value co-creation emerges and evolves. Managerially, it offers insights into the existing value and co-creation potential of all actors, even those who are currently passive or reject a value proposition. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Although markets are flooded with digital services to help consumers, B2B marketers have to a lesser degree developed technology-based services that support their customers. B2B firms that engage in new technology-based self-service (TBSS) do not only have to develop and exploit resources within their firm; they must also secure resources through relationships with partner firms such as IT vendors, software developers, and so forth. In doing this, they will confront both their own and other industrial networks’ different institutional logics. This study utilizes IMP and service-dominant logic (SDL) thinking as a mean to assess the challenges firms face when they aim to redefine their offering to include TBSS. Through an explorative and grounded case study research design focusing a sustainable TBSS, we develop an emerging conceptual framework that presentations the abilities required for developing and managing TBSSs. Besides developing this framework that comes with managerial implications, the paper access the usefulness of bridging IMP and SDL thinking by acknowledging the institutional logics that are at play in different networks.

Modern Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) allow firms to integrate their information and control their departments. The ERPs are originally developed to handle a single firms production process, which means that their effects can be interpreted as affecting a firm intraorganizational. With the later growth of interorganizational usage of ERPs, something that is described as ERP2, firms can expand the ERP to include interorganizational usage (i.e. with different business partners). When doing so, the ERP design can’t only support internal routines, but it also have to adapt to the activities that are carried out with business partners. This article discusses the need to widening the perspective when examining ERPs in a business context; to not only involve intraorganizational or interorganizational issues, but to use both perspectives simultaneously. It also shows how the internal (intraorganizational) usage of the ERP can be interpreted as more rigid and governing than the use in the business interaction with others (interorganizational), which is more ad hoc. A case study indicates that the ERP use in the business interaction is less frequent or even dismissed and that other information systems (IS), suitable for the activities that are carried out with the business partners, are preferred. This highlights the need of considering the users needs, their activities, and their business interaction when designing ERPs that are support the business interaction with other firms.

Purpose – Wroe Alderson’s market ‘transvections’ (Alderson, 1965) was an early conceptualization of how an offering resulted in value creation after a series of transformations and transactions. The efficiency and effectiveness of how a good, from raw material to the product used by an end-consumer, should be able to be assessed. We will in this paper further develop the idea of transvections based on empirically grounded concepts from the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) research tradition in parallel with the currently developing Service-Dominant (S-D) logic lexicon. The objective with this paper is to pinpoint theoretical and methodological challenges that may contribute to a grand theory of markets that infuses the idea of markets as networks and the S-D logic lexicon. A second objective is to offer an updated version of the transvection that are released from Goods-Dominant (G-D) logic thinking and that are based upon the interaction between generic actors rather than Alderson’s conceptualization of business actors as firms and households. 

Design/Approach –The paper is conceptual in nature and based on an extent literature review of research contributions on Alderson’s transvection, IMP’s business networks, and S-D logic’s value co-creation.  Both IMP and S-D logic has made attempts to leave the G-D logic depiction of market actors as firms, customers, and distributors etcetera in favor for a more generic actor role but to different degrees.

Findings – We propose that the generic actor, which may assume a provider and beneficiary role, is a suitable starting-point for developing an updated transvection. However, whilst Alderson’s transvection followed a focal product the updated transvection will need to follow a focal beneficiary. Furthermore, the updated transvection addresses the market actors’ roles differently (provider or beneficiary) and the roles are not static but in constant flux (a beneficiary will e.g., also be a provider through its engagement in value co-creation).  The focal beneficiary will through multiple interactions that take place throughout the transvection result in a perceived value.  The transvection cut through several service ecosystems of actors (holding both people, artifacts and technologies) that are affected by what have been described as institutional arrangements (Vargo and Lusch, 2016) or institutional logics (Edvardsson et al., 2012) that may harmonize as well as dissonance.  

Implications – The updated transvection is infusing the S-D logic lexicon and it highlights the interplay between three layers; the focal beneficiary that experiences a service with a certain temporal span, other engaged market actors (providers), and the affecting institutional logics that are at play.  The outcome of a transvection does thereby affect the institutional arrangements but also become the catalyst for other transvections which thereby offers a ground for perpetual and circular market thinking.

Denna skrift sammanfattar resultatet från forskningsprojektetKPI2030: Framtidens Hållbara Fastigheter som genomförts av Stockholms Stads Forum för Hållbara Fastigheters medlemmar i samarbete med forskarna Peter Ekman, Jimmie Röndell och Peter Dahlin (Mälardalens Högskola), med stöd av Ossi Pesämaa(Luleå Tekniska Universitet) samt Steven Thompson och RandyRaggio (University of Richmond). Målet med projektet var attutveckla nya nyckeltal och indikatorer som stärker hyresvärdens och hyresgästens dialog om långsiktigt hållbara och energieffektiva fastigheter i framtiden. Fokus har därför varit att utgå ifrån både hyresvärdens och hyresgästens perspektiv gällande förvaltningsfasen (dvs.när fastigheten brukas). I projektet deltog därför både representanter för hyresvärdar och hyresgäster och workshopar samt enkäter har utgått ifrån fastigheter med kommersiella eller offentliga hyresgäster. Resultatet presenteras i denna skrift som innehåller dels nyckeltal och indikatorer som idag kan tas fram genom att mätas och jämföras, och dels sådana som med rådande teknik svårligen fångas men som i framtiden kan bidra till hållbara fastigheter och som kan erbjuda hyresgästen värde. Studien undersökte även vilka hållbarhetsområden som hyresgästerna fann intressanta. Resultaten indikerar hyresgästernas nuvarande intresse för hållbarhetsfrågor, vilken relation de har med sin hyresvärd, hur de vill interagera med sin hyresvärd samt i vilken grad de kan tänka sig engagera sig i hållbarhetsinitiativ –uppgifter som bör ligga till grund i det fortsatta hållbarhetsarbetet.

Developing and implementing ways to measure sustainability (i.e., indicators) need to cope with rivalry and conflicts in institutional logics to become a useful tool when planning and initiating actions for sustainable development. This paper reports on the structure of a current research project and elaborates on early research results. The aim is to initiate a discussion regarding new challenges and explore potential research directions on the matter of institutional logics and sustainable development when developing smart indicators. The paper presents the initial theoretical framework focusing institutional logics and the methodological structure.

Building on recent engagement research, this study contributes to a deepened understanding of business actor engagement (BAE) dimensions that includes both behaviors and emotions. Following a systematic combining approach, this study contextualizes and clarifies BAE. Through an analysis of dyadic data (providing firm and customers), we offer in-depth knowledge of the antecedents and types of BAE. This study identifies engagement disposition combined with engagement connectedness as the antecedents of an engagement initiative’s overall BAE. Building on these dynamics, we propose a conceptual BAE framework with a set of testable propositions that links BAE with its proposed antecedents. Finally, we use the empirical and theoretical insights to derive a BAE taxonomy consisting of four types that offers guidance on how to manage customers with different engagement characteristics in practice.

Recent research underscores the advantages for incumbent firms in developing services that addressglobal challenges. However, the pursuit of such strategic service innovations often faces obstacles asfirms rely on a predefined, structured decision-making process known as the business case to guidetheir investments in pioneering sustainability initiatives. The traditional business case approach todecision-making has drawn criticism for its limitations in fostering transformative services thatredefine value propositions and propel markets toward sustainability. This study develops analternative business case model for evaluating the potential of innovative sustainability services basedon a service-dominant (S-D) logic foundation, emphasizing systems change through effectuation and abroader stakeholder perspective. By adopting an abductive approach centered on challenges andinsights articulated by managers in the Swedish real estate industry, we develop a model that offersdirectional guidance for both evaluating current and new services for sustainability. The result – atranscending business case model – represents an early S-D logic artifact, enabling incumbent firms todevelop new services in a manner akin to their assessments and implementation of existing services.The model carries significant theoretical and managerial implications into how researchers and firmscan contribute meaningfully to addressing grand challenges.

Triple bottom-line challenges are increasingly related to the long-term survival of companies. Both researchers and businesses understand that the transformation towards a sustainable future is dependent on green IS initiatives. However, companies base their decisions on business cases when investing in IS. Many of the required changes that green IS can offer—especially when it comes to new systems that require new business models—are not captured by business cases. This paper presents a model that widens the perspective on value creation. The presented Sustainable Stewardship Management Model (SSMM) allows companies that strive for a stewardship role to evaluate both existing and new forms of green IS by combining casual and effectual decision-making. The model is a result of a collaboration with several large Swedish commercial real estate companies, their tenants, and a non-governmental organization (NGO). The model will be tested in a follow-up project.

Extant literature focuses primarily on deliberate, proactive market-shaping efforts to understand changes in markets. This paper explores how emergent, incremental activities might unintentionally prompt market innovation due to the interactions of capability development and its required institutional work. Using a critical case method, we study a firm that successfully challenged established market logic by systematically changing its capabilities. A longitudinal field study reveals that capability development demands induce changes to institutional foundations; then, as institutions change, further capabilities can be developed, all of which may instigate wider market innovation outcomes. This study conceptualizes this intricate, iterative process, as well as its evolutionary market innovation outcomes. The proposed three-level capability model can guide firms striving to offer new and innovative services. The authors also detail a three-stage research design methodology that can help research and practice gain in-depth understanding of both emergent unintentional market innovation and strategic deliberate market-shaping activities.

This study addresses the emergence of new actors and their roles in the transformation of smart cities. By building on a Service-Dominant logic perspective, the study capture how smart city transformation is closely related to a smart market transformation. While prior conceptualizations of markets have followed a linear supply-demand structure, the new market conceptualization can be described as a service ecosystem. The study empirically follows the increased use of renewable energy, such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and their related services, as they are incorporated into smart cities. The results reveal that the overall interaction level among the involved actors increases as the energy market changes from a linear to a networked logic. This transition impacts the market's information quality and, subsequently, the actors’ level of required knowledge. The study shows that even if the prevailing actors become more informed, information needs to be ‘translated’ into ‘knowledge-in-context’ to become a valuable resource. Thus, the resulting service ecosystem demands a complementary actor that requires the role of a knowledge broker to function. The paper describes the mechanisms behind this smart city transformation and clarifies the broker functions.

This article analyses how a generic form of information technology (IT), enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, can be selected by companies to enhance their business. ERP systems are a means of becoming more efficient through predefined standard functions called 'best practices'. Following the theory that markets are made up of business relationships in a network context, managerial advice would be to assess the vendor's existing business relationships. A company can harvest the inherent functions that an ERP system has from the vendor's prior interaction with other customers. This paper discusses how a company benefits from engaging in a new business relationship with an ERP vendor to become more competitive. However, this relationship is double-edged. A lesson is that the functions developed by the ERP vendor and the customer only offer a temporal competitive advantage, given that it can be used later in the ERP vendor's other connected business relationships.

Enterprise systems (ESs), i.e. standardized applications supplied from software vendors such as SAP or Oracle, have been extensively employed by companies during the last decade. Today all Fortune 500 companies have, or are in the process of installing, this kind of information system. A wide-spread denotation for these applications is enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. But the broad utilization use of these software packages in business is rendering this labelling too narrow (Davenport 2000).

A central aspect of ESs is their multi-dimensional characteristics. Based upon a (virtual) common database, ESs allow all business activities to be observed throughout the company (i.e. an operation performed by marketing may be displayed in finance; purchasing; supply functions, and so forth, in real-time). But with this high visibility and extensive information processing capacity comes the drawback that the information system as a whole may be hard to grasp (Markus 2004, Davenport 1998).

When implementing an ES package, the company can select from different industry-adapted modules providing core functionalities (i.e. that support proc¬es¬ses such as production, supply chain management, and R&D), as well among complementary modules to be used in support processes (such as finance, HR, marketing, etc). In fact, along with Internet, ESs can be seen as the most important technology to have attained wide-spread use during the last decade (Seddon et al. 2003). For a company this means that the integration of an ES into its business operations by neces-sity will, to a greater or lesser extent, affect the business activities that are carried out. For companies, these business activities have been observed by researchers to take place within relatively stable, long-term oriented business relationships with specific well-known counterparts (Håkansson and Snehota 1995). This means that ESs, especially with the high level of usage in companies (Seddon et al. 2003), become an interesting research object not only from a company-focused perspective, but also from a broader perspective, allowing business relationships to unique suppliers and customers to be included.

But how can ESs be captured and understood in this setting? This question will be discussed and elaborated on in the following sections, leading to some recommendations on relevant issues

Purpose – While much existing research on MNC digital transformation has followed a linear design and implementation logic using cross-sectional data, the multiple and divergent needs of headquarters (HQ) and subsidiaries suggest that MNC digital transformation actually involves a more iterative journey. In this paper, we apply the theoretical perspective of embeddedness to better define the complexities of MNC digital transformation, and identify how HQ and subsidiaries can navigate the complexities.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a longitudinal multi-case study of five Forbes Global 2000 firms that are HQ in Europe with large subsidiaries in the U.S. We conducted in-depth interviews with 26 senior executives at HQ and subsidiaries over a 15-month period.

Findings – The process of digital transformation is significantly influenced by internal embeddedness (relationship of HQ with subsidiaries and across subsidiaries) and external embeddedness (relationship of subsidiaries with their local markets), and also by strategy, financial and technology considerations. While HQ and subsidiaries have different perspectives, an understanding of these influences can help HQ and subsidiaries navigate digital transformation.

Research limitations/implications – HQ and subsidiaries can apply insights from this research to navigate the complexities of digital transformation.

Originality/value – This paper demonstrates that embeddedness is a useful theory to understand the complexities of MNC digital transformation.

Multinational companies (MNCs) have been actively pursuing globally integrated information technology (IT) as a mechanism for better coordination and control of business processes. This paper presents a multiple case study of five MNCs’ experiences with global IT initiatives and explores the drivers and obstacles they encountered.  We conceptualize the MNC as being embedded in internal and external business relationships. The analysis shows that the MNCs’ main motives for global IT can be found in the headquarter-subsidiary relationship where global IT enables the firm to obtain economies of scale and increased control which in turn enables the MNC to become international or global oriented. The external embeddedness, i.e. the subsidiary-partner relationships as well as other connected business relationships in the local business networks, is one of the major obstacles for global IT as it requires a level of adaptability not inherent in the context of global IT standards.