Value Co-Creation in Industrial Buyer-Seller Partnerships ... - Doria

are: setting the boundaries of the network, mastering complexity, understanding the role oftime and process, and making case comparisons (p 12).For this study where the object of study is a buyer-seller dyad, the first challenge is to takecare of the specific focus of the research and the research questions associated with thechoice of scope. Mastering complexity is surely a challenge for any kind of research in thefield of social sciences, especially when examining a social phenomenon in its real lifecontext. In this study complexity is dealt with by attempting to provide a thoroughdescription, a full story of the reality, as I as a researcher have perceived it. Understandingthe role of time and process has been one of the main challenges in the process. The corearguments in the study are that value is dynamic, that value is something that changes overtime, that value is context and actor dependent, and that it is subjective. These things given,the role of past, present and future for value and value co-creation are of core importancethroughout the whole study. The capturing of these has been done throughout telling thestory, i.e. describing and analysing the case of the focal dyad. First of all the description ofthe early development of the relationship and later the development of their relationship andmore specifically in digging deeper into the benefits and sacrifices of being involved in ahigh-involvement relationship.Throughout the story there is an attempt to highlight events and activities onindividual, firm, network and industry level to understand how things have evolved overtime and in this way to build a coherent story that supports the conclusions made at the end.An obvious risk in doing case-study research is to be “ overwhelmed by the volume of dataand lose sight of the most important dimensions and issues” (Halinen & Törnroos 2004, p3). This obviously has to do with the researcher’ s skills and analytical capacity, the qualityof which is to be judged by the audience of the study.In addition to studying the process of how the relationship has evolved and developed,the focus of the study is to identify what is perceived to be the value that is created in therelationship. Consequently the interviews focused on discussing each individual’ s personalprocess within the relationship and each individual’ s perception of value and value cocreation.The interviews were transcribed and analysed, applying thematic analysis intodifferent categories of perceived value i.e. different perceptions of value that therespondents brought up during the discussion.2.4.2 The role of time and contextThe issue of “ time” is one of the things highlighted by Halinen and Törnroos (2004) as achallenge in studying business networks. The role of time is crucial for this study and willtherefore be discussed below. The authors argue: “ networks are changing in relation to the40