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There is a paucity of published research regarding service employees’ side of gloomy consequences emanating from value co-creation (VCC). The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the activities and interactions of VCC that can result in negative well-being for service employees.

This paper is a theory synthesis paper and, as such, seeks to accomplish conceptual integration of multiple theories and literature streams.

The origins of negative outcomes of VCC are infinite, and for the purpose of this study, the potential triggers of negative outcomes are limited to typical processes and behaviours initiated by VCC of services. For the purposes of this paper, dysfunctional customer behaviour, customer incivility, value co-destruction, boundary-spanning activities, organisational structure and policies and resource integration are investigated as sources of negative well-being for service employees.

The first limitation is the focus on offline transactions. Although the accepted definition of a service ecosystem provides for it to be a “self-adjusting system” a need could emerge for some formal management structure to cope with the increasing complexity of service transactions. A theoretical implication of this paper is that it includes a few lesser researched elements in the context of VCC. A starting point to deal with undesirable VCC interactions is to distinguish between undesirable interaction outcomes that originated inside the firm (own service employees) and those that originated from outside the firm (dysfunctional customers).

A first suggestion on how managers could deal with undesirable VCC interactions is to distinguish between undesirable interaction outcomes that originated inside the firm (e.g. own service employees, firm policies and structure) and those that originated from outside the firm (e.g. customer incivility and dysfunctional customers), as these two types of interaction outcomes require different interventions. Firms will need to bring together, study, analyse and assess all service employee experiences and challenges generated by VCC interactions. The frequency and significance of negative incidents should indicate the amount of effort and time to be spent on types of negative incidents.

A challenge for service ecosystems is how they will adjust to comply with novel and traditional non-business objectives in the light of transformational, upliftment and other calls from society, whilst at the same time improving the well-being of the entire service ecosystem (i.e. providers, users and society). The improvement of well-being versus reducing suffering/losses/risks is not an option. The words of Hammedi et al. (2024, p. 159) “we move towards the conceptualization of service ecosystem health as a harmonious state in which private, public and planetary well-being merge” are exceptionally fitting here.

The negative consequences of VCC impact the well-being of service employees and are costly for a firm. Suggestions to prevent or limit the impact of undesirable or harmful consequences are made. This study is of value for service businesses, service academics and society. A greater awareness of the destructive nature of negative consequences of VCC will hopefully transpire from this study.