Service Ecosystems Emergence and Interaction: A Simulation Study

Abstract

This paper describes the examination of emerging institutions and phase transition of service ecosystems in value cocreation processes under the basic tenets of service-dominant logic. We conducted several computational experiments with an agent-based model, in which we represented the generic actors and their operant resources, and examined their interactive behaviors in agent-based simulations. In the simulations, actors started changing their social properties from self-supporting individuals to reciprocal resource integraters. During the transaction, the actors increasingly specialized into specific roles and clusters of actors with the identical roles emerged-pointing towards processes of institutionalization, and dependent on the conditions of land fertility levels. Several phase transitions were observed in emerging service ecosystems, which were supported by complex structures of exchange and collaboration networks.

Analysis of Localized Actors’ Behaviors in Service Ecosystem Simulation

“…We simulated service ecosystems with an agent based model in our previous work [4] [5]. In that model, an agent works as a roll of an actor that has operant resources, such as catching fish, growing wheat, exchanging and collaboration.…”

“…When actors started expanding their residential area out of the center circle, they were specialized into fishing or farming skills and made collaborative groups with the actors who were specialized into the same skill. As a result, the residential area was divided into fishing and farming villages, each of which was occupied by the actors who had a higher skill for a single kind of tasks [5]. After villages grew beyond a limitedly larger size, specialized marketers appeared at the surrounding area to help fishermen and farmers to exchange their service, since the specialized fishermen and farmers cannot carry out exchange by themselves because of the longer distance lying between the villages.…”

“…Such a macro-to-micro emergence is also important in human lives. In our previous research, an actor optionally calculated the entropy of the types of neighborhood actors, found the most profitable place in the map in correspondence to the entropy, and moved to the place [5]. The experiments in this subsection applied the same rules to actors.…”

“…Our previous work examined a value cocreation process with agent-based simulation [4] [5]. In those simulations, an agent behaves as a general actor with several service resources and collaborates with each other to create values and complement his/her capability, as in the basic definitions of S-D logic.…”

“…Then, we observed that agents started as self-contained actors who achieved all tasks necessary for their lives by themselves, endogenously constructed groups, organization and institutional arrangements, and finally figured out service ecosystems in their society. Their growing stages were not monotonic, and several phase transitions were repeated [5], as dynamics of ecological systems described by Holling [6].…”