Purpose: Value co-creation is often necessary for situation where expertise and resources are beyond a single actor. Despite the vast study of value co-creation in service system by both academics and practitioners as an overarching theory, that describes collaboration between consumer and provider. More importantly, little is known about how value co-creation is established in social network analysis and there is little agreement on what depicts value co-creation. These missing concerns included; vast studies of value co-creation in dyadic relationships and sparingly in multi-actors, lack of study on theoretical and empirical features of value co-creation, lack of empirical investigation of strength of interactive relationships in networks for co-creation of specific value-in-use. These thought-provoking missing concerns necessitated this research by forwarding the question; “What are the features of social value co-creation in service system and how can it be established in social networks”?
Methodology: A case study approach is employed using the exploratory sequential mixed methods. The contextual investigation was carried out in water supply system called KAMOMI. The KAMOMI water scheme provides water supply facility and has in place a service system consisting both the provider, consumers and different stakeholders. The case represents a service system where value co-creation occurs within actor-to-actor interactive relationships to benefit the community.
Findings: The paper argued that the examination of value co-creation among multi-actors in social networks analysis is highly significant to its cogency and generalisation. The qualitative analysis provided evident features of value co-creation, which transforms value co-creation from dyadic to multi-actors interpersonal interactive relationships in social network analysis. The value co-creation features included resource integrating networks, defined value-in-use, actors’ empowerment, perceived ownership and knowledge sharing. Meanwhile, the quantitative analysis discovered that closeness of both formal and informal relationships; including frequency of informal interactions enable access to integration of resources of multi-actors for value co-creation.
Contribution: The study of value co-creation in social network analysis represents an interesting gap and is highly essential for designing effective service system to enhance the goal of value co-creation. The paper contributes by illustrating (a) features of value co-creation in networks (b) empirical evidence of how strength of relationships of actors enhance resource integration in networks
