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Attracting top talent to an organization has never been more difficult, according to a senior recruiter with more than 18 years experience. Hamish Davidson, Veredus Executive Resourcing chairman, described some of the lessons he has learned while recruiting for the public, private and not‐for‐profit sectors, when he gave the 2004 summer lecture at Bradford University School of Management, UK.Human Resource Management International Digest editor David Pollitt was there.

Descriptions of research conducted within the interpretive research paradigm do not always capture its messy and unpredictable nature. The naturalistic inquiry described in this paper attempts to provide a candid account of some of the challenges encountered in such research. Interestingly, many of those challenges were consistent with the challenges associated with the process of learning to be a facilitator, which was the focus of my study. The study sought to describe the theories and practices of facilitator educators preparing facilitators to work in community organisations, training or education contexts, and business management settings. Following a brief description of the methodology and methods of the study, some of the unexpected symmetries between learning to be a facilitator and conducting interpretivist research are discussed. These included the need for selfawareness, practising intentionality, and managing conflicting roles. The strategies I used to respond to the research challenges I describe are also discussed and I encourage others to reflect on, and share, the trials and tribulations encountered during their research.

This paper aims to develop impact value (IV), both theoretically and practically, to better account for the processes of value creation within complex service ecosystems.

This conceptual paper connects the complex systems nature of service ecosystems and the complexity of issues of sustainability and well-being to the need for a conceptual and analytical extension of value within service ecosystems.

This paper defines IV as enhancement or diminishment of the potential of stakeholders (beyond the service beneficiary), to transfer or transform resources in the future, based on direct and indirect involvement in the processes of value-in-exchange and value-in-use creation.

This paper provides an initial exploration of the theoretical and practical extension of value through the IV concept.

Sustainable service ecosystems require actors to understand their role in the service process and account for the impact pathways of their value creation activities. This paper proposes a framework for developing sustainable strategies to account for IV.

This research expands service research’s core concept of value by integrating the complex systems nature of service ecosystems, sustainability and well-being. IV provides a means to address the systemic impact pathways of service and value creation processes and bridge idiosyncratic value-in-use and broader system viability concepts.

Enterprising projects require a mixture of the imaginative and rational, not the rejection of one in favour of the other. Where a clear distinction is made, the imaginative and rational may support different doctrines on how knowledge and understanding should be acquired. Where attempts are made to draw on both as analytic and creative resources, e.g. as in the qualitative treatment of new social data, researchers may have the task of developing a complementary approach to social enquiry which combines objectivity with intuition and detachment with feelings of rapport. The data obtained often require an advocacy approach to argument, one where a persuasive line of argument is designed to establish the relative strength of a case in what may well be an adversarial context of claims and counter‐claims. Where research deals with various kinds of evidence, e.g. objective and subjective, research methods must be argued as compatible with a research problem and its context, and not dictated arbitrarily by research doctrine. An example is given of what is claimed to be a rational, linear approach to developing the internal logic of a research report; the claim is discussed that rationality and imagination may be complementary in speculative research; and an advocacy approach to presenting a research case is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce ecotones to the service literature as a conceptual extension of the service ecosystem (SE) framework.

To synthesise the contribution, an illustrative empirical case study with research of nine organisations and their service systems is developed.

Boundaries connect systems with their environment. Ecotone, a concept from natural ecosystems, provides a useful concept representing the boundary zones between adjacent systems, supporting emergent phenomena. The authors find that a service ecotone emerges through the interactions occurring at the intersections of relational, technological and institutional boundaries of two unique SEs. The case demonstrates ecotone edge effects – the unique landscape and diversity of actors and their roles – which play a role in the co-evolution of the separate SEs.

The ecotone concept provides an understanding of SE boundaries, helping practitioners understand the complex environments they operate. Developing strategy in complex ecosystems requires a clear understanding of where the boundaries of dependence and interdependence lie. The ecotone concept helps practitioners to develop responsiveness and resilience to their environment and take advantage of resources that may be currently unrecognised.

The authors introduce the ecotone concept and integrate it with service theory. This paper develops service ecotones for understanding the relationship between different systems that influence their functioning and development. Thus, ecotones suggest new avenues for understanding the diversity and roles of actors, and how new structural properties, resources and practices come to be through the tensions and interactions created in these complex boundaries of SEs.

The paper aims to investigate the value of a network perspective in enhancing the understanding of the business to consumer marketing of high‐involvement product categories. This is achieved through the analysis of the development of fair trade marketing in the UK.

The paper addresses the research question through an analysis of relevant literatures from both marketing and other disciplinary areas. The paper is thus multidisciplinary in nature. Findings from a series of in depth, semi‐structured interviews with senior representatives of a fair trade wholesaler, of a specialist fair trade brand, of supermarket retailers involved with fair trade and of other fair trade labelling and support organisations are reported and discussed.

The relevance of an actor network theory (ANT) informed interpretation of the development of the fair trade marketing network is revealed. Its emphases on the processes of exchange and the role of human and non‐human actants in enabling interactions within the network are shown to be important. fair trade marketing is shown as occurring within an unfolding network of information exchanges. Analysis of this emerging network highlights a shift of emphasis in fair trade marketing from the fair trade process to fair trade products and, latterly, fair trade places.

The paper highlights the requirement for further conceptualisation of the business to consumer marketing of high‐involvement product categories, and reveals the potential of ANT as one approach to meet this need. The paper also provides a detailed insight into the development of fair trade marketing in the UK.