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Because of the increasing importance of access over ownership, the purpose of this paper is to propose a service ecosystem perspective to help managers navigate hypercompetition. With the rise of cloud-based services and the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy has shifted toward hypercompetition, a state characterized by organizational advantages that are rapidly created and then destroyed by intense competitive moves. Because advantages are quickly eroded, organizations must be aggressive in the number of actions they take and the speed with which they execute these actions. The service ecosystem perspective focuses on relationships that allow organizations to jointly adjust to one another and to their environment.

This paper first reviews traditional strategies for navigating hypercompetition. Then, it presents an explanation of the service ecosystem perspective. Finally, the three north stars and media examples are provided.

The service ecosystem perspective asserts “north stars” that can guide managerial decision-making in hypercompetitive environments. These north stars are: cultivate system norms, facilitate feedback loops and embrace servitization.

In today’s world, organizations are increasingly seeking access to resources instead of ownership of them. The proposed approach suggests that, rather than an organization owning the resources it needs to achieve advantages, organizations are increasingly relying on accessing resources by coordinating with other organizations to draw upon the resource(s) as needed, without incurring the additional burdens of ownership. Examples from the media industry are used to illustrate the three north stars of the service ecosystems perspective.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how manufacturers make collaborative decisions in the ecosystem in the context of digital servitization.

Constructing an inframarginal analysis mathematical model to transform the ideal ecological niche choice of firms into solving the problem of maximizing the utility of firms, exploring the service boundary conditions of digital service business under the ideal ecological niche choice and focusing on the effects of niche factor, digital technology input and transaction efficiency on the boundary decision.

The boundaries of digital services business are in dynamic change, and changes are influenced by a combination of niche factor, digital technology input and transaction efficiency. Businesses focusing on a single niche and fully collaborative business delivery models are more in line with the trends under the digital service transformation.

Analyzing ecosystem participants’ cooperative decision-making on digital services from the perspective of ecological niche strategy selection. The study enriches the research on firm niche theory as well as service boundary decision theory in servitization transformation and provides theoretical guidance and management suggestions for firms to construct appropriate service boundaries to achieve synergistic and stable development of service ecosystems in the process of digital servitization transformation.

Drawing from transformative service research (TSR) and service ecosystem perspectives, the author seeks to provide multi-level insights into gaming service systems and call to action how this knowledge can contribute to cultivating socially responsible gaming by addressing the following research questions: What insights from service ecosystem and TSR literature can help optimise value co-creation and cultivate socially responsible practices in digital gaming services? What future research directions could advance the understanding of digital gaming services and their potential to develop a responsible gaming ecosystem that balances social well-being with commercial success?

Adopting a conceptual approach of theory synthesis and adaptation, the author discusses four overarching themes alongside key research gaps and directions crucial for understanding the dynamics of gaming ecosystem.

The central themes – “Exploring individuals as game service consumers”, “Gaming service exchange dynamics among meso-level stakeholders”, “A macro lens to gaming service ecosystem” and “The complexities of multi-actor dynamics and interdependencies” – shed light on how responsible services can be fostered.

Given the absence of a well-defined scope for understanding responsible gaming, future research should develop a typology to capture its multifaceted aspects. Expanding beyond micro-level analysis, conducting consultation interviews with industry practitioners and policymakers can contribute insights into promoting responsible gaming services.

The author offers insights for the game players, designers and developers, service providers and policymakers to promote a healthy gaming culture.

Through this research, the author advances the understanding of gaming as a service by illuminating value co-creation and co-destruction within an interconnected gaming service ecosystem through the lens of TSR. Such understanding empowers businesses to prioritise consumer welfare in their decision-making and practices.

This study aims to provide in-depth insight into how value is co-created on different levels of context (i.e. dyads, triads and networks) within a service ecosystem, and thus examine the impact of indirect service-for-service exchanges on the value co-creation process, the interdependencies between different levels of context and the roles in the value co-creation process that the actors play depending on the context level.

Using the theoretical framework of service-dominant logic, the authors carry out a case study analysis of a service ecosystem built around a digital platform where independent confectioneries sell customised cakes to customers.

This paper provides evidence for the importance of a wider context extending beyond producer–customer dyad as well as indirect service-for-service exchanges in the process of value co-creation. This paper also conceptualises trans-contextual exchanges, that is, exchanges occurring between different context levels of the service ecosystem. The analysis also allowed us to establish that the same actors simultaneously play different roles in the service ecosystem, depending on the level of context.

This study highlights the importance of indirect service-for-service exchanges and trans-contextual exchanges. Constituting discreet avenues of value co-creation, often obscured from a single actor of a service ecosystem, these two types of exchanges are nonetheless crucial to understanding the full scope of the ecosystem’s interconnectedness, the varying roles of its actors, as well as supporting the scaling up process of the service ecosystem.

Althogh there are studies examining value co-creation within wider contexts or ecosystems from the service-dominant logic perspective, usually little attention is paid to the indirect service-for-service exchanges and the interplay between different levels of context.

The assessment of ecosystem services (ES) in urban areas can be an important policy instrument for both strategic directives at national and regional levels and concrete actions at municipality level. A unifying underpinning framework that combines different administrative levels through a common, consistent basis would greatly facilitate the mainstreaming of such an instrument. Three key concepts underpin this framework: urban ecosystems, nature-based solutions (NBS), and ES. First, NBS are acknowledged as the ecological assets that in the urban context can provide ES, meant as complex processes made possible through the existence of natural and seminatural systems at various scales. Second, the classification of urban ecosystems needs to be consistent with the treatment of urban areas in ecosystem accounting and with NBS levels of intervention and primary objectives. Third, by serving societal challenges, it is important to clearly frame the strategic drivers of change: whether it concerns management practices of current land use or radical conversions in land use. Finally, once such a framework will be in place, it can facilitate sustainability assessment in urban ecosystems by quantifying the presence of NBS, whose creation/maintenance assure the delivery of ES. The purpose of this chapter is to theoretically frame an ES-based approach, but this is only a first step. Many more steps are required on to concretely put this framework in practice at different administrative levels, such as strategic planning and policy setting (at national level), and urban, peri-urban, and coastal development (at municipal level).

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.

The unsustainable management of ecosystem services often arises as a result of the non-recognition of the multiple benefits or under-valuation of ecosystem services. The chapter looks at economic valuation as an essential tool in ecosystem management decision-making and policy. It discusses the economics of ecosystem services, explains the motivations for economic valuation, describes economic valuation methods, and examines the limitations of economic valuation. It emphasizes that economic valuation can be a powerful and convincing tool for placing ecosystems on the agenda of planners and decision-makers.

This paper aims to illustrate how service ecosystem governance may provide a suitable ground to pursue holistic resilience to “wicked” socio-economic and ecological problems, for enhancing “place-based” sustainable performance outcomes through an organizational, interorganizational and context setting.

This work suggests the use of “place-based” collaborative ecosystem platforms driven by a dynamic performance governance approach as a setting where facilitated performance dialogue is carried out among networked stakeholders. This fosters a holistic view of performance sustainability where intangibles, inertial, cultural and behavioral factors play a key role in policy analysis.

The paper illustrates how different research streams framing stakeholder relationships under a business, hybrid organization and public sector perspective converge toward the “service ecosystem” construct, as a common field for sustainable “place-based” value creation. This performance governance perspective frames accountability for achieving sustainable outcomes through interconnected viewpoints, i.e. (1) time (short vs long-term), (2) subject (single organization, “theme-focused” service ecosystem and “place-based” service ecosystem) and (3) field (socio-economic, cultural and ecological).

This work has an interdisciplinary track. It recommends feedback and “stock-and-flow” modeling to enhance framing counterintuitive patterns of behavior of dynamic complex socio-economic, cultural and ecological subsystems within “place-based” collaborative ecosystem platforms. Combining an inside-out with an outside-in view triggers sustainable outcome-based dynamic performance governance through an organizational, interorganizational and context setting.

This article investigates the practical implementation of the ecosystem approach in different branches of public management within an urban context. It explores how ecosystem thinking is introduced, disseminated and applied in a local government organization.

We utilize a qualitative case study methodology, relying on official documents and expert interviews. Our study focuses on the city of Espoo, Finland, which has actively embraced ecosystem thinking as a fundamental framework for its organizational development for almost a decade.

The case of Espoo highlights elements that have not been commonly attributed to the ecosystem approach in the public sector. These elements include (1) the significance of complementary services, (2) the existence of both collaborative and competitive relationships among actors in public service ecosystems and (3) the utilization of digital platforms for resource orchestration. Our study also emphasizes the need for an incremental adoption of ecosystem thinking in organizational contexts to enable its successful implementation.

The study provides valuable insights into the introduction and dissemination of ecosystem thinking in public management. It also further develops previously developed hypotheses regarding public service ecosystems.

The service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this understanding by developing a typology of service ecosystem dynamics that explains the varying interplay between change and stability within the service environment through distinct behavioral patterns exhibited by service ecosystems over time.

This study builds upon a systematic literature review of service ecosystems literature and uses system dynamics as a method theory to abductively analyze extant literature and develop a typology of service ecosystem dynamics.

The paper identifies three types of service ecosystem dynamics—behavioral patterns of service ecosystems—and explains how they unfold through self-adjustment processes and changes within different systemic leverage points. The typology of service ecosystem dynamics consists of (1) reproduction (i.e. stable behavioral pattern), (2) reconfiguration (i.e. unstable behavioral pattern) and (3) transition (i.e. disrupting, shifting behavioral pattern).

The typology enables practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of their service environment by discerning the behavioral patterns exhibited by the constituent service ecosystems. This, in turn, supports them in devising more effective strategies for navigating through it.

The paper provides a precise definition of service ecosystem dynamics and shows how the identified three types of dynamics can be used as a lens to empirically examine change and stability in the service environment. It also offers a set of research directions for tackling service research challenges.