Persistence of Contested Value Cocreation Practices

The climate crisis and other global challenges make it clear that not only are new value cocreation practices (VCPs) needed, but some current VCPs must be discontinued. Prior service literature assumes that VCPs can be disrupted by reforming the institutions that govern them. However, empirical observations show that VCPs may persist even when targeted by institutional work, and recent organizational research points to contested practices that continue to be enacted even when challenged or criticized. To understand this phenomenon in value cocreation, we conducted an embedded case study of exotic pet-keeping—a set of VCPs that continue despite intervention efforts. Our findings reveal that when exotic pet-keepers became reflexive of contestation in the symbolic elements of their VCPs, they modified their material elements, leading to four types of contested VCP reconfiguration. Two of these types—conforming and confining—resulted in the dissipation of the contested VCPs, while the other two—converting and circumventing—led to their persistence. We contribute to service research by introducing the concept of contested VCPs and developing a typology and a theoretical framework of their reconfiguration. Our work offers practitioners and policymakers a new approach to designing interventions to discontinue VCPs and evaluating their outcomes.