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The aim of the paper is to describe the differences between networked and non‐networked firms' methods intended to increase profitability, methods for intended growth, implemented and intended openness development, and experiences of networking.

The research approach is empirical and descriptive. Data were gathered by mail survey from Finnish software producers.

Networked firms intended to improve profitability by boosting resource efficiency, while non‐networked firms concentrated on price increases. No difference occurred in firms' perceptions of their profitability. Networked firms intended to grow by mergers and acquisitions and by cooperation with partners. Non‐networked firms were eager to grow by developing new software products. Networked firms intended to increase information sharing more and were more open in sharing information concerning firms' technical competencies, cost, and commitments to other organizations. Lack of marketing resources was the most important reason for firms to join a network.

The research setting (how the firms are classified in groups, for example) could benefit from deeper analysis of how network characteristics are connected and which variables best estimate and describe the degree of networking of a firm. A larger sample of firms should be covered to achieve generalizable results. Systematic comparison of industries would also provide essential information on network dynamics.

Networked firms had grown more than non‐networked firms but no connection between profitability perceptions and networking was obtained. In software industry, growth may produce networks but networking seems to support growth.

This paper aims to identify the specific problems faced by the Finnish public sector organizations in designing and implementing performance measurement systems (PMS).

An understanding of the problems is obtained by examining three case organizations in practice. In order to support the analysis of the empirical findings, a review of prior literature on the private and public sector PMSs is carried out.

The design and implementation processes in the Finnish public sector organizations differ significantly from the way they are realized in industrial private sector companies. The four underlying reasons for problems in public sector organizations are the following: there are many stakeholders with conflicting needs; the end products and goals are undefined; there is a lack of property ownership and lacking management skills.

By utilizing the results of the study, PMS design and implementation in the public sector can be carried out by taking into account and avoiding the evident pitfalls introduced in the study.

A large portion of the prior research on public sector PMSs consists of surveys and conceptual studies. This paper describes three case studies and reveals new insights into the specific challenges faced by public sector organizations, especially in designing and implementing PMSs.

The aim of this paper is to create a framework in which the behaviour of unit costs in public sector outsourcing situations can be analysed.

Explorative case study concentrating on theory building.

Public sector organisations have not concentrated on analysing or modelling the unit cost behaviour in outsourcing situations. The lack of systematic cost management tools seems to lead to poorly managed and non‐profitable outsourcing projects or ignorance of the possibilities of outsourcing.

By utilising the results of the study, decision making regarding outsourcing in public sector could be based both on forecast cost development and on political judgement instead of relying only on political judgement without understanding cost behaviour.

The paper introduces a new framework to be used as a tool in practice and to be validated in further studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implications of the networked and open nature of the service business on performance measurement. The literature has acknowledged that the value of service is increasingly produced by service systems, but solutions for measuring the performance of a service system are still lacking.

The paper constructs a conceptual framework for capturing performance of a service system by combining ideas from the service management and performance measurement literatures. This framework is then applied in two service systems, one from the public sector and one from the private sector. Two different service systems provide complementary views on the phenomenon of service system performance and call for distinctive measurement solutions. In both cases, interviews, series of workshops and an analysis of documentation of the prevailing measurement systems were conducted when applying the framework.

The results indicate that the performance measurement of a service system necessitates measurement information from three perspectives: the performance of individual actors, the internal efficiency of a network and the customer-perceived performance of service operations. The paper provides empirical evidence about the design and implementation of performance measurement for a service system. It also provides some guidance to overcome the recognized measurement challenges that relate, for example, to the shared responsibilities, to integration of measurement data and to capturing customer-perceived impacts of services.

The paper provides new understanding about performance measurement practice in a service system. It integrates service-dominant management philosophy into the long tradition of performance measurement, which concentrates excessively on organizational structures. Even though the common balanced performance measurement frameworks include the perspective of a customer, the application of the frameworks is easily side-tracked leading to sub-optimization when several organizations and customers participate in value creation.

Empirical evidence illustrates the practical need for a new perspective on performance measurement of service systems. This can be achieved by shifting the unit of analysis from organizations to customer-perceived performance. The practical performance measurement systems need to balance with the aspects of effectiveness and outcomes of services, the efficiency of the production network and the performance of individual actors.

Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences and behaviors can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities to design personalized and high-quality service. This paper aims to review how netnography as a method can help service researchers and practitioners to better use such data.

A systematic review and analysis were conducted on 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.

The systematic review reveals that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.

This paper shows how netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.

Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.

Netnography has seen limited use in service research despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of the method and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contingency factors affecting performance measurement in the service context. The paper aims to review the literature on performance measurement and synthesize it to a framework that creates a basis for analyzing measurement practices in various kinds of service contexts.

In order to obtain a fresh update to the existing knowledge on the topic, a systematic literature review was carried out. Around 8,000 articles published between 2005 and 2011 were reviewed and as a result 80 papers were chosen for a more detailed examination.

The paper applies a fresh approach to performance measurement in services, increasing generalizability of case study findings. By analyzing a large set of studies, the study identifies contextual factors that affect performance measurement in service operations. The resulting framework acts as a foundation for further research on performance measurement in services.

The results of this research can be further refined into more practice‐oriented framework. After further field research and testing, the framework can be linked to practical recommendations in different settings of measurement development.

The measurement of service operations is known to be challenging due to some service‐specific features. Much of the existing research on the topic has been carried out in a specific service industry with a specific measurement need. In order to increase generalizability, there is also a need to carry out cross‐case analysis identifying patterns among individual case studies. This supports the application of lessons learned from a certain specific setting into other fields. There is very limited knowledge on the contingency factors related to measurement system development caused by service context.

The role of industrial services has increased in importance as product manufacturing oriented companies have been moving towards industrial services and integrated solutions. While migrating towards solutions provision, manufacturing companies have been developing new Service offerings, service business models logics and methods of service delivery are developed by using new technologies for value co-production and co-creation. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the solution providers perspective by illustrating central approaches tapping into industrial services, such as environment-strategy-fit, scope of industrial service offering, industrial service business capabilities, and servitization process.

The paper reviews literature related to industrial service phenomenon providing a: framework for environment-strategy-fit in the context of Industrial Services taking Fit; defining industrial service business; defining industrial service business capabilities; and a critical perspective toward industrial service business research.

Where this paper provides a framework for environment-strategy-fit in the context of Industrial services, it also develops grounds to consider the maturity levels of servitization in a solution provider context. This paper recognizes the maturity levels of manufacturing companies providing a typology to analyze the level of servitization. Finally, this paper also serves as an introduction to an interesting special issue on industrial services.

The existing industrial service theory related industrial services can be strengthened by developing frameworks and typologies to better understand the transformation from products to industrial services and integrated solutions. technology digitalization and enable operational and outsourcing services, in addition to performance services.