Conceptualizing resource integration as an embedded process: Matching, resourcing and valuing

Abstract

The strong linkage between the creation of value and the actors' resource-integrating efforts forces academics and practitioners to understand how value stems from resource integration (RI). This article analyses RI as an embedded process within the wider process of interactive value formation. The study is conceptual in nature and adopts a qualitative research approach and an empirical contextualization strategy. It provides a granular perspective on RI and proposes a framework that depicts RI as a process that shapes and results from a complex service context through a sequence of three phases: matching, resourcing and valuing. The article, particularly the suggested new framework, contributes to the extant literature on RI in service research; it reconceptualizes RI as process per se that is embedded in actors' value co-creation efforts and offers the opportunity to reflect on this process as a fundamental enabler in value-creating service ecosystems.

Actors’ Dynamic Value Co-creation and Co-destruction Behavior in Service Systems: A Structured Literature Review

“…[29], [30]; 2. resource integration practices/activities/drivers e.g. [22], [23], [31]. ; 3. the importance of resource integration towards value creation process e.g.…”

“…According to Kaur et al [33], resource integration predicts VCC by significantly influencing customer participation. Caridà, Edvardsson, and Colurcio [22], [31] in turn argued that resource integration should be viewed as an integrated and embedded part of the VCC process as emerging from three activities: the integration of resources, operations on resources, and the assessment of value. The value emerging from this process can be positive or negative, depending on the alignment or misalignment of the actor's resource.…”

“…Matching represents the fitness of available resources to mobilize and enable higher resource density and constructive interactions through dialogue [24]. According to Caridà et al [31], matching is the pre-phase of the resource integration process based on interaction, which enables actors to share ideas, knowledge, and experiences [24]. However, sometimes the highly cocreated services may fail and could contribute to negative disconfirmation and dissatisfaction [54].…”

How Costumers’ Way of Life Influence the Value Co-Creation

“…Customers can be engaged in valuable practices whether providers are present in their activities or not, meaning, that providers are only supporters of customers' value, rather than sources of it. In sum, value emerges in interaction when resource integration takes place in matching-yet different-practices (Caridà et al, 2019;Hartmann et al, 2015;Schau et al, 2009).…”

“…Moreover, it is essential that the provider figures out how its resources can be combined with other resources, comprising its customers' (Korkman et al, 2010)-and that the provider be able to design resource constellations to support the latter; hence, value can be cocreated (Vargo et al, 2008). This standpoint extends resource integration by not only considering the provider, but also the customer (Heinonen et al, 2013) and other stakeholders (McColl-Kennedy et al, 2012), as they all might participate in the effort to activate resources for value creation (Caridà et al, 2019;Wetter-Edman et al, 2013). Furthermore, this raises the domain of value creation to another level, wherein providers seek to incorporate customers' resources into their own processes (Moeller, 2008).…”