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- Anastasiadou, Elena
(författare)
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Business Actor Engagement : Understanding Collaborative Business Initiative Outcomes
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Business and service literature has recognized engagement as a crucial concept that influences the success of business initiatives beyond core transactions. Engagement involves various actors’ contributions like time, knowledge, and other resources that extend beyond contractual obligations. Engagement was initially studied in business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts, where its activities include word-of-mouth feedback and co-creating value propositions. As engagement research extended into business-to-business (B2B) contexts, engagement activities included customer referencing and participation in service development, with contributions like influence, time, and expertise. This thesis focuses on understanding engagement in B2B contexts – conceptualized as business actor engagement (BAE) – and offers practice-relevant midrange theory conceptualizations of collaboration in business initiatives beyond the contracted and regular transactions. The study employs a qualitative approach to studying Swedish real estate landlords and their efforts to involve commercial tenants in collaborative business initiatives (conceptualized as engagement initiatives) to deepen the understanding of BAE. The collaborative business initiatives in the thesis’ empirical setting address issues of environmental sustainability, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy efficiency. Despite providers using similar strategies to involve their B2B customers, the outcomes of these engagement initiatives vary, often due to hidden aspects affecting customers’ engagement. The findings are presented in four papers that offer insights on BAE such as how prerequisite factors, antecedents and manifestations impact customers’ BAE and consequently the outcomes of collaborative business initiatives. By exploring BAE, the study offers an understanding of the variety in outcomes from collaborative business initiatives, i.e., why some business initiatives succeed or fail. By understanding and managing BAE aspects, the study suggests collaborative business initiatives may result in achieving intended outcomes, such as goals related to addressing climate change and societal problems. Although the study centers on the real estate industry, the findings have broader implications for businesses striving to develop and adopt initiatives that will require their partners’ engagement to achieve intended outcomes and – by doing so – build strong, lasting relationships with their partners.
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| 3. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring "high tech" and "high touch" interaction capabilities : aligning the IT portfolio with customer and supplier relationships
- 2021
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Ingår i: Information Technology and People. - : EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LTD. - 0959-3845 .- 1758-5813. ; 34:2, s. 862-886
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: To explore the emergent characteristics of IT portfolios in business-to-business (B2B) firms. The goal is to develop a model that clarifies what interaction capabilities B2B firms develop and to what form of IT this corresponds to.Design/methodology/approach: We apply an a priori conceptual framework that is based on the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group's theoretical focus on business relationships. The framework depicts the business relationship as dealing with uncertainty and equivocality as well as building and upholding reliance and trust. We utilize a case study approach involving a focal firm and ten of its customers and suppliers. Building on 60 interviews, field observations and archival data, we analyze interviewee responses and the complementary data to evaluate the role of IT in supporting or automated various aspects of organizational relationships.Findings: Results show how "high tech" and "high touch" relate to different interaction capabilities, which firms develop based on the characteristics of their business relationships. Although IT is associated with "high tech" and "high touch" interaction capabilities, some forms of IT are deployed to support the former, while other forms support the later. Both forms of technology-enabled interaction capabilities require investment, and firms must balance investment costs against the value created by improved interaction capabilities.Originality/value: Our findings emphasize the interorganizational perspective (dyadic or network) rather than a solely organizational perspective for understanding IT portfolio development. This perspective is presented through an emergent tech-touch interaction capability model that shows how B2B firms can align their IT portfolio based on the specific characteristics of their business relationships.
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| 4. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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The Interconnectedness of "Best practices" : How small and midsize companies can gain from selecting the large companies' IT
- 2009
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Ingår i: Handling Plurity of Relationship Forms in Networks. - www.impgroup.org : IMP Group.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Today’s companies can take advantage of state-of-the art information technology (IT) as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, business intelligence software and web-based services to facilitate their business. Many of these technologies are general in their design – i.e. they are of-the-shelf solutions available to a wider customer group. Within the information systems (IS) discipline this has lead to the managerial advice that companies should evaluate the IT-vendors prevailing market position and the prospect of their future (taking in consideration e.g. the vendors solvency). This paper is empirically focusing ERP systems – company wide information systems that comes with a standard set of pre-defined procedures called ‘best practices’ – and it presents two cases that illustrates how these ERP systems inherent the best practices that the IT-provider has developed in cooperation with its prevailing customers. Following the European theory on markets as network, i.e. an approach developed within the IMP Group, a alternative managerial advice would be to assess the vendor’s business network. Thus, this paper puts forth the later approach and discusses how a company contributes respectively benefits from selecting an IT-provider that develops enterprise systems for their respectively industrial sector. The paper puts forth two cases where one illustrates how a company is involved in the development of a IT-vendors best practices and the other case illustrates how a company gets best practices by looking at the IT-vendors customers. The two illustrating case studies are carried out at Kanthal AB, a company within the Sandvik Group, and at CH Industry AB, a small supplier to Volvo Construction Equipment. Whilst the larger company Kanthal had to go through a process of software customization to get the adequate functions in their ERP system CH Industry has instead gone with the standard package. The customization that Kanthal required has later become one of the IT provider’s features, i.e. a new best practice, something that other customers can benefit from. CH Industry has also selected the same complex and comprehensive ERP system as Kanthal even if their need, as a rather small company, should be of another nature. CH Industry has though selected a competitive standard package and they motivate their choice of ERP system by relating to the IT-provider’s customer base. Implicit CH Industry understands that the IT-provider’s customer network will mean that their ERP system will be offered continuous improvements and upgrades, and they will thereby getting state-of-the-art best practices even in the future. The paper concludes with discussing the interconnectedness of best practices – whilst Kanthal are an active partner in the development of a set of best practices, CH Industry is a company that benefits from prevailing best practices. The implication of the cases is that a company benefits from an awareness of its IT-vendor’s wider business network. Companies needs to – as well as considering the IT provider’s solvency, market position, and evaluations of the technology as advised by managerial information system theories – evaluate the IT-provider’s prevailing customers and their business procedures and preferences.
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- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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The Sustainable Stewardship Management Model for Green IS
- 2023
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Ingår i: 29th Annual Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2023. - : Association for Information Systems. - 9781713893592
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Triple bottom-line challenges are increasingly related to the long-term survival of companies. Both researchers and businesses understand that the transformation towards a sustainable future is dependent on green IS initiatives. However, companies base their decisions on business cases when investing in IS. Many of the required changes that green IS can offer—especially when it comes to new systems that require new business models—are not captured by business cases. This paper presents a model that widens the perspective on value creation. The presented Sustainable Stewardship Management Model (SSMM) allows companies that strive for a stewardship role to evaluate both existing and new forms of green IS by combining casual and effectual decision-making. The model is a result of a collaboration with several large Swedish commercial real estate companies, their tenants, and a non-governmental organization (NGO). The model will be tested in a follow-up project.
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| 6. |
- Ekman, Peter, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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The Transcending Business Case for Sustainable Services
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Recent research underscores the advantages for incumbent firms in developing services that addressglobal challenges. However, the pursuit of such strategic service innovations often faces obstacles asfirms rely on a predefined, structured decision-making process known as the business case to guidetheir investments in pioneering sustainability initiatives. The traditional business case approach todecision-making has drawn criticism for its limitations in fostering transformative services thatredefine value propositions and propel markets toward sustainability. This study develops analternative business case model for evaluating the potential of innovative sustainability services basedon a service-dominant (S-D) logic foundation, emphasizing systems change through effectuation and abroader stakeholder perspective. By adopting an abductive approach centered on challenges andinsights articulated by managers in the Swedish real estate industry, we develop a model that offersdirectional guidance for both evaluating current and new services for sustainability. The result – atranscending business case model – represents an early S-D logic artifact, enabling incumbent firms todevelop new services in a manner akin to their assessments and implementation of existing services.The model carries significant theoretical and managerial implications into how researchers and firmscan contribute meaningfully to addressing grand challenges.
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| 7. |
- Erixon, Cecilia, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Studying information system provider relationships impact on business relationships
- 2013
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Ingår i: BUILDNING AND MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS IN A GLOBAL NETWORK.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Information systems are used for managing and supporting companies’ business relationships and have become an important part of companies’ exchanges with their customers. Information systems are usually managed by a third party, an information system provider (IS-provider). Companies are dependent on their information systems to maintain their business performances and are therefore also dependent on the IS-provider's competence. This paper studies the impact that a company’s IS-provider relationships have on its customer business relationships. By using the concept of connection and studying its degree of continuity and strength, the study offers insight on the impact of the IS-providers' relationships on a company's customer relationships. The study consists of a case study involving five customer relationships and four IS-provider relationships, creating twenty within-cases. The result shows that the companies' relationships are dependent on the exchanges with the IS-providers. This impact and the characteristic of the connection may vary over time, making the concept of continuity important to consider when evaluating a company's relationship with IS-providers. The study shows that it is important for companies to consider these two business relationships in relation to one another when managing the IS-provider relationship and the information systems that are used in customer relationships. Important management aspects can be missed in the evaluation of an IS-provider, if the connection between the relationships is left out of the analysis.
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| 9. |
- Thompson, S., et al.
(författare)
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DeSET : Digital Energy Services and Ecosystem Transformation
- 2023
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Ingår i: 29th Annual Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2023. - : Association for Information Systems. - 9781713893592
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this emerging research paper, we introduce a project exploring the role of a commercial real estate property company called Mestro on enhancing the efforts of its clients to provide environmentally sustainable venues for their clients who also value environmentally sustainable business practices. Mestro provides real time energy usage and advanced reporting systems that enables commercial property owners to optimize tenant energy consumption. Through the lens of service dominant logic, we will perform a multiple case-based study to understand how Mestro, in collaboration with its commercial property clients and their tenants, creates an ecosystem where all parties co-create value for each other. In addition to the case studies, we will analyze actual energy consumption based on real data provided by the participating commercial property companies on tenant energy usage.
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