The Evolving Dynamics of Service Co-Creation in a Viable Systems Perspective

In today’s competitive arena, competent responsible decision-makers have a core role in monitoring environmental needs, trends and expectations and dealing with interactive relationships in the wider service ecosystem. As there has been a shift in perspective from products to services, new research agendas focus on encouraging and guiding managers towards an appropriate approach to service systems Our paper – combining both a traditional analytical approach (focus on the parts) and holistic approach (focus on the whole) – privileges a relational perspective and suggests an innovative methodology whereby system dynamics prevail over structural components in order to analyze service systems for value co-creation. In line with the aims of the present study, we argue that VSA is a coherent approach justifying the logical shift in the pathway from a Service Dominant Logic (SDL) to Service Science (SS) and culminating in a process of General Systems Theory (GST). This framework illustrates how value is co-created through interaction. In substance, our paper explains how the dynamics of service co-creation evolves by means of an approach grounded on a series of postulates inherent to VSA, SS and SDL. In this respect, the structure and system dichotomy clarifies the statics and dynamics relative to products and services respectively.