A service design perspective on the stakeholder engagement journey during B2B innovation: Challenges and future research agenda

Innovation in business-to-business (B2B) contexts deals with highly dynamic, complex, and heterogeneous constellations of stakeholders with a diversity of goals, motives, and capabilities that further challenge successful management of B2B innovation processes and outcomes. Complex challenges, such as sustainability and digitization trends, push these B2B firms to embrace new innovation methods that help them manage disruptive change. Service design thinking has emerged as an innovation management practice emphasizing a human-centered innovation process of user interactions, creativity, and learning mindsets. In this article, we aim to evaluate the challenges and develop a research agenda on how service design can effectively enable stakeholders' engagement during the B2B innovation process. We argue that to advance service design opportunities for stakeholder engagement, we need to address the unique complexities and challenges of stakeholder engagement during innovation from a systemic and dynamic process perspective. From a systemic perspective, we zoom in on the building blocks of stakeholder engagement and address multi-level stakeholder engagement platforms (i.e., innovation networks). From a dynamic process perspective, we treat stakeholder engagement as an emerging process and zoom in on the temporal and relational connections and hybrid orchestration to allow for both structural and emerging stakeholder engagement during innovation. We develop a stakeholder engagement journey in which we integrate service and innovation stages and propose how service design activities can support and facilitate the aforementioned challenges and complexities. Finally, we identify concrete research questions and, accordingly, develop a research agenda for future research on stakeholder engagement in B2B innovation trajectories.     

Stakeholder management in complex product systems: Practices and rationales for engagement and disengagement

Collaboration with stakeholders has become a cornerstone of contemporary business; however, absolute collaboration is not trouble-free. The present study explores how and why firms engage and disengage external stakeholders in their value-creating activities in complex product systems over time. From the existing research on stakeholder management, we know that actor roles, strategies, reasons and challenges of engaging external stakeholders in innovation and business activities vary across contexts. However, additional research is needed to construct a more comprehensive understanding of the practices as well as their rationales by which firms engage or disengage external stakeholders in complex product systems. Our empirical study of a European district development megaproject improves the current understanding of stakeholder management in complex product systems contexts. We derive nine practices and four rationales that timely describe the engagement and disengagement of external stakeholders. The study develops a processual model of stakeholder management in complex product systems with implications for both stakeholder management literature and managerial practice.     

Network mobilizers and target firms: The case of saving the Baltic Sea

This paper examines why and how firms participate in issue networks that aim at solving contemporary complex problems. We build mainly on network and stakeholder literatures to understand mobilization from a relational perspective. Drawing on a single embedded case study of four initiatives to save the Baltic Sea, we build a multilevel model for firm participation in issue networks. Besides discovering diverse motivational factors, the model sheds light on the interaction between individual, organization, and network levels factors explaining mobilization. We argue that there is high theoretical, managerial, and societal relevance for studying the dynamics of issue networks—a topic which could be better incorporated in the research agenda of business network scholars.     

Analysing an activity in context: A case study of the conditions for vehicle maintenance

The IMP approach is concerned with analysis of complex industrial networks. How to design case studies relying on these theoretical assumptions poses a challenge. In this paper we address this challenge by discussing a case study, focusing on the conditions for maintenance of heavy vehicles. The aim of the paper is to suggest an approach for analysis of embedded activities in industrial networks. The case study takes its starting point in the perspective of an actor considering how to develop vehicle maintenance services for its customers and points at the need to enable understanding of the conditions for vehicle maintenance, which necessitates identification and analysis of the variety across transport service settings.     

A radical constructivist approach to boundaries in business network research

We contribute to the business network literature by presenting and introducing a radical constructivist research approach, in which we foreground sharing the context of an actor's understanding of interaction. We elaborate the approach by illuminating the problematic issue of boundaries in business network research. We conceptualize boundaries as inter-action spaces and times where differences are created, maintained and changed in a physical-social setting. We make a distinction between boundaries and borders, with the latter being simply representations. We undertake a review of select realist and social constructivist business network literature to distinguish and elaborate the potential of a radical constructivist perspective, as an alternative approach. The approach appears most useful when the researcher and interview participant do not have a convergent understanding of the research phenomenon. Further, a radical constructivist approach is eminently suitable for settings where inter-action conditions and content are changing, for example in times of crisis or network change. We present the metaphors of castles and frontiers, as illustrative research tools suitable for a radical constructivist study of boundaries in business networks.     

Managing in complex business networks

For many years, research and management thinking has focused on understanding business relationships and networks. Now, the focus is shifting to managing business relationships and networks. This new approach focus poses two questions. Since networks are loosely coupled systems, to what extent are business networks manageable? Furthermore, how can a firm's ability to manage a network be characterized and measured? This paper addresses these two questions by synthesizing the current state of knowledge on management issues in networks and the contribution to managerial abilities in complex relationships. The discussion leads to a set of propositions describing the abilities firms will need to successfully manage complex business networks.     

Exploring the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities for social innovation in a humanitarian aid supply network setting

This paper explores the microfoundations of the dynamics capabilities (DCs) needed for social innovation in a humanitarian aid context. We aim to reveal how humanitarian aid supply networks should develop DCs to achieve social innovation by meeting societal needs in highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments. We conducted a qualitative content analysis on the activities of Logistics Cluster (LC), which is an organization that coordinates and guides local and international organizations to support worldwide humanitarian aid interventions. We primarily examined the LC's lessons-learned reports, supported by semi-structured interviews with the managers of LC and its supply network members. The findings revealed that: (i) early anticipation of needs in disaster-affected areas and lessons-learned exercises are the microfoundations of sensing capabilities; (ii) building capacity, supply network service provision, collaboration with logistics service providers, local partner engagement, building trust, and reconciliation are the microfoundations of seizing capabilities; and (iii) coordination and adaptability are the microfoundations of reconfiguring capabilities in the humanitarian aid context. Additionally, we identified relevant microprocesses for this context, which are preparing, engaging, strengthening, streamlining, and responding. Based on these findings, we propose a framework for social innovation in highly dynamic settings.     

Service Delivery Networks and Employment Relations at German Airports: Jeopardizing Industrial Peace on the Ground?

In this article, we ask how organizational restructuring towards a network form of service delivery challenges an established form of employment relations in Germany, that is labour–management collaboration. Building on a theoretical discussion of the marketization hypothesis, we develop a structuration perspective on the relationship between network restructuring and labour–management collaboration, which highlights the political economy of inter-firm networks. Empirically, we focus on two major airport authorities in Germany. Our findings show how these authorities at the core of service delivery networks face a strategic trade-off between short-term labour cost reductions and more adversarial employment relations. Apart from coinciding with a deterioration in working conditions for service workers, the handling of this trade-off depends on managers’ and worker representatives’ commitment to collaboration across the network. While unions and works councils initially continued with social partnership-type practices, the more adversarial management practices for enacting the network restructuring cause a fragmentation on the workers’ side and increase the conflict potential. We conclude that the agency of management and worker representatives in the enactment of inter-firm networks oscillates between more partnership-like and more conflictive practices, which turn the network restructuring into a political process with divergent outcomes for employment relations.     

Platforms in service-driven manufacturing: Leveraging complexity by connecting,sharing, and integrating

Service-driven manufacturing firms often rely on networks in service operations; however, in order to leverage the network approach, firms must address the challenges of managing and orchestrating complex inter-organizational relationships. In this study, we identify how companies aim to leverage network-related complexity in their operations instead of trying to reduce complexity. We show how platform approaches have been used and could be used in this setting to assist in the flexible externalizing of resources and capabilities, and to provide structure for network orchestration. Although limited to the case-study setting, this study provides a rationale for using platform approaches in a service-driven manufacturing context, demonstrating how all of the identified logics have a special role in value creation in service networks.     

Integrating Multiple Stakeholder Issues in New Product Development: An Exploration

Addressing the interests of a wide set of stakeholders is important because it may have positive effects on financial performance. At the same time, however, it is also very complex because managers may face conflicting stakeholder issues, much more so than organizations that listen to only one stakeholder. Little is known about how multiple stakeholder issues are dealt with in the context of new product development (NPD). The objective of this study is to delineate the elements of stakeholder integration in the context of NPD. A combination of insights from stakeholder theory and market information processing serves as a theoretical perspective to guide the empirical exploration in this study. The authors take the development of green (ecological) products as an empirical context for their qualitative multiple case study. Specifically, they selected four case studies with different expected levels of stakeholder integration, based on literature about green NPD. Data were collected through in‐depth interviews with key informants, collecting documents, and obtaining artifacts. In total, 28 informants from various domains were interviewed. Transcribed interviews were coded using qualitative analysis software. The results show that a distinction needs to be made between market and nonmarket stakeholders, and that not all organizations are equally capable of identifying issues that are important to both categories of stakeholders. Organizations that identify issues that are relevant to both market stakeholders and nonmarket stakeholders are more likely to face tensions between stakeholder issues in NPD. Organizations manage these tensions using several, sometimes redundant, coordination mechanisms and using multiple prioritization principles in conjunction. Based on the results, the authors conceptualize stakeholder integration capability in an NPD context as the combination of stakeholder issue identification techniques, coordination mechanisms, and prioritization principles. They propose that stakeholder integration capability is the result of a learning process. Moreover, they propose that proactivity of environmental management and environmental impact of the industry help to explain why stakeholder issue identification techniques are developed, and that the identification of more stakeholder issues leads organizations to develop coordination mechanisms and prioritization principles. Finally, the authors propose that stakeholder integration capability leads to competitive advantage through organizational identification by stakeholders. The study implies that integrating multiple stakeholder issues is not just a matter of feeding additional information into NPD processes, but of changing the nature of these NPD processes.     

B2B relationship management in complex product systems (CoPS)

The management of complex product systems (CoPS) has been studied in the academic literature, so far, from a process, organizational, external environment, and technological perspective. Little research has investigated stakeholders' perspectives, particularly when the management of innovative customized solutions is involved. When firms are engaging more and more in complex projects, to create a competitive advantage, academic research should focus on stakeholder interactions and the detailed processes they use, to reinforce stakeholder engagement and to co-create value. Hence, this call for paper was an invitation for scholars to submit papers to study CoPS from a relationship management perspective.     

The healthcare network economy: The role of Internet information transfer and implications for pricing

Over the past several decades, in an effort to increase quality and efficiency, more emphasis has been placed on preventive medicine, active participation of consumers in their healthcare, and healthcare networks that collaboratively provide medical care. This article addresses how the Internet has facilitated the development of new communication flows between networked stakeholders and the impact information transparency has on the demand for and the delivery of healthcare. Using actual patient treatment data, interviews with practitioners, and consumer interaction on Internet message boards, we discuss how increased information transfer shapes healthcare coverage and treatment options and the managerial implications for healthcare pricing along the value chain.     

Relating in business networks: Innovation in practice

Few studies have looked at the innovation process in the early stages of new business ventures in the context of business networks. Reporting on eight years of development of a new venture, we examine how the development of initial business relationships in an ever-changing business network affects technological innovation. We conclude that technological innovation is contingent on the development of business relationships that are a critical mechanism permitting a new venture not only to access but also to produce knowledge essential for innovating. For management this implies the need to strike a judicious balance between internal focus and closure to produce novel solutions and external focus and openness to experiment in business relationships.     

A Bibliometric Review of Open Innovation: Setting a Research Agenda

Through an objective, systematic, and comprehensive review of the literature on open innovation (OI), this article identifies gaps in existing research, and provides recommendations on how hitherto unused or underused organizational, management, and marketing theories can be applied to advance the field. This study adopts a novel approach by combining two complementary bibliometric methods of co‐citation analysis and text mining of 321 journal articles on OI that enables a robust empirical analysis of the intellectual streams and key concepts underpinning OI. Results reveal that researchers do not sufficiently draw on theoretical perspectives external to the field to examine multiple facets of OI. Research also seems confined to innovation‐specific journals with its focus restricted to a select few OI issues, thereby exerting limited influence on the wider business community. This study reveals three distinct areas within OI research: (1) firm‐centric aspects of OI, (2) management of OI networks, and (3) role of users and communities in OI. Thus far, studies have predominantly investigated the firm‐centric aspects of OI, with a particular focus on the role of knowledge, technology, and R&D from the innovating firm's perspective, while the other two areas remain relatively under‐researched. Further gaps in the literature emerge that present avenues for future research, namely to: (1) develop a more comprehensive understanding of OI by including diverse perspectives (users, networks, and communities), (2) direct increased attention to OI strategy formulation and implementation, and (3) enhance focus on customer co‐creation and conceptualize “open service innovation.” Marketing (e.g., service‐dominant logic), organizational behavior (e.g., communities of practice), and management (e.g., dynamic capabilities) offer suitable theoretical lenses and/or concepts to address these gaps.     

An activities-based approach to network management: An explorative study

Over the last few decades, the industrial marketing literature and the business network literature have promoted a holistic approach to marketing and provided a framework for understanding interorganizational networks. However, our understanding of how interorganizational networks govern themselves when developing innovations is still limited. Most network management literature does not focus on the activities employed by network actors and/or does not recognize that there may be different modes of network management. This study explores how, why and in which combination network management activities are employed in a network and in doing so proposes a new conceptualization of network management. Using primary and secondary data pertaining to eleven innovation projects, this study reveals how network management consists of combinations of (rather than individual) management activities undertaken to manage a network. This study identifies three distinct modes of network management: basically coordinated, control-oriented and reward-oriented. Moreover, this study proposes that network actors try to match the management mode to their prevailing mental model as well as the type of network (e.g. in terms of project innovativeness).     

Enterprise logic: explaining corporate attention to stakeholders from the ‘inside‐out’

Why are some firms more effective than others at addressing stakeholder concerns? Conventional stakeholder theories focus on variables in the external environment and cannot adequately explain variance across firms operating in the same context. Our matched‐pair study of eight global corporations goes inside the firm and investigates the role of managerial cognition on corporate attention to stakeholders. We find that top management's conceptualization of the firm's relationship with society—which we name enterprise logic—prompts distinct foci of attention and potentially constrains how well a single firm can simultaneously attend to multiple stakeholders. These findings highlight the value of an ‘inside‐out’ perspective, centered on managerial cognition, in explaining why some firms address stakeholder concerns more effectively than their peers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leveraging stakeholder networks with outside-in marketing

The theory of Outside-in marketing (OIM) emphasizes the importance of internal and external partners of a firm to drive strategies for value creation. OIM is based on four key tenets: market sensing and responses, segmentation and targeting, innovation, and employee's learning effort. With this commentary, we apply the theory of OIM to network analysis. By doing so, we identify key stakeholder networks as part of a firm's business ecosystem and discuss the value that can be extracted from different stakeholder networks. Most prior network research in marketing has mainly used customer or employee network data while neglecting other important stakeholder groups. We provide information about how network analysis of stakeholder data can fill gaps in the marketing literature and provide firms with essential knowledge, economic value, and influence over external partners, and improve the value generation process. We first describe each tenet and give examples of stakeholder networks that can be investigated within the realm of the tenet definitions. We then discuss different challenges that social network research can pose, and end with future research questions that can be explored for empirical research studies.     

Understanding ERP system implementation in a hospital by analysing stakeholders

Implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems requires significant organisational, as well as technical, changes. These will affect stakeholders with varying perspectives and interests in the system. This is particularly the case in health care, as a feature of this sector is that responsibility of services is shared between many autonomous units. In these and similar settings, it is essential to analyse stakeholders and to understand their expectations and attitudes towards the system. Such an understanding will help implementers to address stakeholder interests and to encourage acceptance. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretically based model to analyse how stakeholder attitudes and behaviours in a hospital setting affect the outcome of ERP implementation. This model is applied in an empirical study of a project to introduce an ERP system in medium‐sized hospital in The Netherlands. The study shows how the ERP implementation impacts the interests of stakeholders such as physicians and administrators, which caused tensions. The paper examines the reasons of these tensions. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of ERP implementation in health care and any other similar sectors from a stakeholder perspective, and it may help implementers to manage this more effectively.     

Shareholder value,stakeholder management,and social issues: what's the bottom line?

We test the relationship between shareholder value, stakeholder management, and social issue participation. Building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees, customers, suppliers, and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible, valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage. On the other hand, using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders. We test these propositions with data from S&P 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value, while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.