Innovation in service ecosystems—Breaking, making, and maintaining institutionalized rules of resource integration

Abstract

Drawing on service-dominant logic and institutional theory, this paper examines innovation as a process that unfolds through changes in the institutional arrangements that govern resource integration practices in service ecosystems. Four cases are used to illustrate the interdependent patterns of breaking, making and maintaining the institutionalized rules of resource integration occurring on multiple levels of institutional context. Such institutional work allows actors to cocreate value in novel and useful ways by a) including new actors, b) redefining roles of involved actors and c) reframing resources within service ecosystems. Our findings show that while the efforts of breaking and making the institutionalized rules are required for such changes to occur, at the same time, institutional maintenance is also important for these changes to institutionalize, that is, to become an integral part of the institutional structure coordinating value cocreation.