Service innovation as a social construction: The role of boundary objects

Abstract

This article advances a conceptualization of service innovation as socially constructed through resource integration and sensemaking. By developing this view, the current study goes beyond an outcome perspective, to include the collective nature of service innovation and the role of the social context in affecting the service innovation process. Actors enact and perform service innovation through two approaches, one that is more concerted and another that emerges in some way. Each approach is characterized by distinct resource integration processes, in which the boundary objects (artifacts, discourses, and places) play specific roles. They act as bridge-makers that connect actors, thereby fostering resource integration and shared meanings.

Happiness and co-creation of value: Playing the blues

“…Seen as a co-creative phenomenon, happiness is uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary (Axiom 4) but is often co-created with other actors (Axiom 2). Just as the understanding of value in specific contexts is enhanced through the views of multiple actors, who bring with them multiple meanings, and value systems (Mele et al, 2019), the same thinking can be applied to research on the co-creative aspects of happiness/SWB. As advocated by Brodie et al (2019), a multi -meaning approach requires an understanding based on the subjective (individual actors experience) and the intersubjective (what kind of interactions co-create value and in which contexts do actors create value).…”

“…Understanding the operand and operant resources that are mobilised by the actors to co-create value in different contexts would add to our knowledge of how human relationships create happiness/SWB. Furthermore, understanding the way these resources are integrated in interactions between actors (Mele et al, 2019) would be insightful. Resource integration is also said to have emergent properties in enhancing resources and creating new resources (Peters, 2016).…”

Once upon a time… technology: a fairy tale or a marketing story?

“…It is not only a question of the interpretation of the human-artefact relation, but of engagement with the artefacts, with the context of artefacts and with what the artefacts make available. They become boundary objects as socially constructed through resource integration and sensemaking (Mele, Sebastiani et al, 2018).…”

Interorganizational learning: a strategic framework for service networks

“…The main argument in this study is that service networks require a greater degree of attention to interorganizational learning than marketers are usually accustomed to, both when it comes to understanding the constellation of services and the actual delivering of service across providers. Indeed, more knowledge is needed on how to handle tensions that follow for such organizing (Mele et al , 2019; Henneberg et al , 2013). The purpose of this article is to expand our knowledge on the relationship between the organizing challenges of service network delivery and interorganizational learning strategies.…”