Service dominant logic (SDL), service exchange and mutual value creation – a case study from Middle-East’s telecommunication industry

Maghamis, Faisal (2018) Service dominant logic (SDL), service exchange and mutual value creation – a case study from Middle-East’s telecommunication industry. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

The aim of this research was to offer a novel perspective on the existence of Service dominant logic (SDL) in an empirical environment within the growing and strategically important sector of information services. In doing so, the author wished to make an original contribution to SDL by offering a practical theoretical framework that was derived from the core foundational premises of SDL theory. Based on this, an SDL Presence framework was developed after an extensive and thorough review of existing literature on SDL and other relevant concepts. The SDL Presence framework was designed to offer a tool that can facilitate empirical measurement of SDL. It was decided that the aims of validating the empirical relevance of the developed framework would best be achieved by means of an exploratory case study. For, this a Business-to-Business service providing context was considered as most relevant. The author was able to negotiate access to SMC Telecom, one of the largest telecommunications related service provider in the Middle East. The organization’s actual identity has been changed due to concerns of data confidentiality. The scope of the case study was SMC’s B2B Business Unit that embraced three distinct customer segments, which demonstrated considerable variations in service exchange behaviours on the part of both customers and the SMC personnel interacting with them. The case study findings also identified that the strategic imperatives of SMC managers contributed to variations in behaviour and affected the dynamics of mutual value creation (MVC). This in turn was also linked to the business anomaly of having low customer satisfaction scores yet increasing sales (service contract renewals). The study has generated some valuable insights around the concepts that contribute to the development of SDL, namely: how the dynamics of service exchange, contextual managerial orientations, strategic assumptions and resource integration effect MVC. The empirical outputs of the case study have implications for both the theory of SDL and for practitioners tasked with the challenge of managing service exchange programmes.