Knowledge Acquisition, End-user Orientation and Service Vendors’ Performance: A Theoretical Framework

Abstract

This paper probes into how service vendors can improve their sustainable ability of knowledge acquisition in the new opportunities brought out by the rapid development of Big Data. Although there are many literatures concerning this topic, they have been conducted mainly from the perspective of the dual relationship between service outsourcers and vendors, overlooking the emerging fact that the strategic roles played by other entities in service supply chains, such as end-users, are becoming increasingly prominent and that they may challenge existing knowledge acquisition behaviors of service vendors. Accordingly, this article will address this gap, by extending the extant paradigm of the dual relationship to the triad relationship that includes the outsourcer, the vendor as well as the end-user, and by inquiring into how service vendors' end-user orientation will influence their knowledge acquisition and firm performance. Furthermore, by putting forward a new theoretical framework, this paper also investigates how absorptive capacity may moderate the relationship between service vendors' knowledge (market and technological) acquisition and firm performance, under the new service supplying paradigm.