Graduate Research Candidate
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Faculty of Business, Commerce Building Annexe |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 7686 |
| Fax | +61 3 6226 2170 |
| kmsok@postoffice.utas.edu.au |
Abstract
Networking is argued to assist in the development of firms innovative capabilities and assists firms in creating customer value. According to Sambamurthy et al. (2003), networking consists of 3 levels of engagements: firm's engagement with customers (FEC), firm's engagement with employees (FEE), and firm's engagement with suppliers (FES). While FEC and FEE have been extensively researched, there have been few, if any, research on the impact of FES on service innovation. Therefore, this proposed study will include an examination of service innovation from a B2B perspective to more specifically focus on the impact of networking, and FES in particular, on service innovation. More importantly, this proposal extends this focus to the impact of the integration of the three engagement capabilities on service innovation, an area missing from the current literature. The proposed study will focus on three key issues: (i) investigating the relationship between the integration of firm-customer engagement capability, firm-employee engagement capability, and firm-suppliers engagement capability and service innovation; (ii) examining the contingency roles of organizational-structure alignment capability and technological capability; and (iii) using a multi-level hierarchical approach (business partners, managers, employees and customers) to better understand service innovation and value creation and appropriation in services firms.
Keywords
Service innovation, value creation, networking capability, capability integration.