Technology-Enabled Value Co-Creation in Business Networks - The Impact on Innovativeness

Globalisation and advances in information and communication technologies have created a new avenue for collaborative processes and increased the digital content of innovation. Increasingly, businesses are realising the benefits of harnessing stakeholders' capabilities, competences and resources in order to build superior competitive advantage through enhancing innovativeness. In essence, an increasing body of strategic management and marketing scholars suggest that organisations require the ability to attract stakeholders with critical resources and engage in collaborative relationships with them in order to co-create value.

However, very little is known about how the various sets of actors in business networks engage in the value co-creation process, specifically one that is technology-enabled. Furthermore, the literature on the dynamic capability view of the firm acknowledges that networking capability enables actors to occupy a position that is more embedded in the business network. In effect, the number of relationships involving individual actors shows that they occupy a central position. Therefore, there is a need to establish the effect of network position on actors' ability to apply their capabilities to build inter-organisational relationships through which they have access to relevant resources and information in business networks. In essence, neglecting the role of actors' embeddedness not only limits the extent of the understanding of the factors affecting resource integration and the value co-creation process among actors in the business network, but will also lead to endogeneity bias.

The aim of this research, therefore, is to provide a holistic conceptual framework to examine the technology-enabled value co-creation process in a business network context. The framework encompasses networking capability as an antecedent of the value co-creation process and firm innovativeness as a value-based outcome, while considering the moderating role of network structure in fostering the relationship between networking capability and actors` ability to access embedded resources in the network.

Applying the building blocks of interactions, i.e., the DART model, the research examines how value is co-created in business networks through the integration of operant resources using collaborative technology for innovation. It is worth distinguishing here between operant and operand resources; the latter are typically physical (tangible) (e.g., raw material and finished goods) that act on other resources, for example requiring the application of other resources to generate their potential value (Madhavaram and Hunt, 2008). On the other hand, operant resources are intangible and typically reside in different sources such as the organisational (e.g., procedures, routines, competences and capabilities); human (e.g., skills, knowledge and expertise); relational (e.g., relationships with the various actors in the business network); and informational (e.g., knowledge about customers, technology, competitors and new market segments) (Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Madhavaram and Hunt, 2008). Further, the research aims to explore the moderation effects of the organisation's network position in the relationship between networking capability and access to information and resources, as one of the components of the DART model. The aim is also to contribute to the service-dominant logic literature, especially to the performance implications of the value co-creation process that is technologically enabled in a business network context.

In order to achieve the aims and test the hypotheses, the philosophical assumptions of the critical paradigm are relevant to this research. In particular, the research adopts a multi-method quantitative research design consisting first of convergent-based structural equation modeling employed, using the maximum likelihood algorithm in the IBM AMOS 25 software package in order to examine networking capability as an antecedent to the value co-creation process. Further, an evaluation was made of the impact of the value co-creation process on enhancing innovativeness and on testing our moderation variables. Second, the research employed the social network analysis in the Gephi 0.9.2 and UCINET 6.0 software packages, guided by the 'nominalist approach' of setting boundaries of the business network in order to understand and map the business network configuration (e.g., interactions, communications and resource sharing). The analysis extracted the network position parameters to test the moderation hypotheses.

The findings reveal that networking capability positively and significantly affects the DART model components, and that the model positively and significantly affects firm innovativeness. In-degree centrality strengthens the positive association between networking capability and access to resources, while closeness centrality has no significant effect.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the value co-creation process in a business network context. In particular, it contributes to the development of the service-dominant logic perspective by expanding the use of the DART model in a business network context and determining the role of the technology-enabled value co-creation process in enhancing firm innovativeness. It also contributes to the mainstream research on social networks by investigating the effect of actors' embeddedness on the value co-creation process. The findings of the research are also relevant for marketing managers and practitioners, by proposing an overarching framework for the successful implementation of the value co-creation process that is mediated by a digital engagement platform in order to leverage innovativeness, consequently enhancing organisational competitiveness.