Facilitating Value Co-Creation Through Inter-Organizational Information Systems

Many company networks, especially those comprising small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), face the challenge of digitally transforming their value co-creation (VCC). However, this topic, despite its high relevance, remains vastly under-researched. We thus conducted a case study in an SME network to investigate how these companies adapt their internal processes to enable an overarching VCC process in the network and use IT to support it. We first derived a framework of four propositions showing that the modularization of value creation, equality of actors, efficient information and knowledge flow, and inter-organizational information technology support facilitate VCC in these networks. The propositions framework then became our lens to analyze the SME network. Our empirical study enabled us to gain deeper insights into the relationships of the proposed facilitating factors for VCC in company networks and the role of inter-organizational information systems in this context.