Roles as resources: A social roles perspective of change in value networks

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of value co-creation and co-production by exploring how social roles can be drawn upon as resources for change in value networks. By broadening the marketing emphasis on dyadic perspectives of social roles to that of a network perspective, a social role is conceptualized as a particular set of practices that connects one actor to one or more other actors. In this way, social roles act as resources for change in value networks because they can lead to social norms and establish social positions, or sets of value-creating relationships connected to a particular actor. The proposed framework suggests that actors continually draw on social roles and social positions as resources in their efforts to co-create value with different actors. Given this, we argue that recent, notable changes in social roles within value networks can be more specifically associated with co-production, or the joint development of potential, exchangeable resources.