Understanding the co-creation of value emerging from the collaboration between IT consulting firms and their customers

Abstract

Recent market developments such as increasing digitalization of services, professionalization of customers, and transparency about the specific value of IT services, are putting IT consulting firms as well as their customers under pressure. Thus, it is of high importance that IT consultancies and their customers are jointly working together to innovate new services and solve specific tasks which come along with the digitization of services. Although previous literature offers valuable starting points for explaining such collaborative value creation, we do not see specific approaches that comprehensively address this challenge. By drawing upon the service-dominant logic as the theoretical frame, we deductively develop a conceptual model that explains the emergence of cocreated value within IT consulting relationships. After a thorough empirical validation of our model, our ultimate contribution will be a theory that equips IT consulting firms and their customers with information to better understand the drivers of co-created value.