انگیزه ها و منابع برای ایجاد ارزش در یک اکوسیستم چندگانه: یک دیدگاه مدیریتی  Motives and resources for value co-creation in a multi-stakeholder ecosystem: A managerial perspective

1. Introduction In recent years, a growing body of the marketing literature (e.g. Anker, Sparks, Moutinho, & Grönroos, 2015; Grönroos, 2011; Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008; Vargo & Lusch, 2008) focused on aspects of value co-creation and, in particular, on the central role played by consumers. Several authors acknowledge that, while consumers are pivotal to the co-creation process, little research has systematically addressed value co-creation from a multi-stakeholder perspective (Hult, Mena, Ferrell, & Ferrell, 2011; Vargo, 2011; Kornum & Mühlbacher, 2013; Vallaster & von Wallpach, 2013). Hillebrand et al. (2015, p. 412) argue that “despite the growing attention to stakeholder marketing, mainstream marketing literature to date has not gone much further than observing that firms have multiple stakeholders”. Our study responds to this need and seeks to advance understanding of why and how diverse stakeholders come together to co-create value. There is increasing recognition in the literature that value is cocreated by the interaction of a multiplicity of stakeholders, rather than in a dyadic interaction process between two entities (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008). Early work by Normann and Ramírez (1993) countered the notion of linear value creation by proposing the concept of a value network. More recently, Gyrd-Jones and Kornum (2013, p. 1484) express this new broader perspective as a “stakeholder ecosystem”, in which value is co-created by the complex interaction of a network of stakeholders each holding specific and individual identities. Every action or input modifies the nature of an ecosystem and this iterative, systematic process differentiates an ecosystem from a network (Wieland, Polese, Vargo, & Lusch, 2012). In practice, all stakeholders are resource-integrators that collectively co-create the ecosystem shared value (Merz, He, & Vargo, 2009). Each stakeholder gives and receives so value is “uniquely experienced and determined by the beneficiary” (Greer, Lusch, & Vargo, 2016, p. 3). This research contributes to the value co-creation literature by providing greater understanding of stakeholders’ motives to co-create within a multi-stakeholder ecosystem and of the resource integration practices that lead to value co-creation. As the role of consumers dominates the extant literature on value co-creation, this study compensates with a strong managerial perspective; consumers are excluded. This study concentrates on stakeholder groups previously over-shadowed by the consumer emphasis in order to offer a refreshed approach and direction to the knowledge base of value co-creation.