Title: Creating and developing the actor-network for a car manufacturing firm's mobility services

Authors: Prasanna Kumar Kukkamalla; Miia Martinsuo; Andrea Bikfalvi; Anna Arbussà

Addresses: Department of Business Administration and Product Design, University of Girona, C/Mª Aurèlia Capmany, 61, Campus de Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Spain ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland ' Department of Business Administration and Product Design, University of Girona, C/Mª Aurèlia Capmany, 61, Campus de Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Spain ' Department of Business Administration and Product Design, University of Girona, C/Mª Aurèlia Capmany, 61, Campus de Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Spain

Abstract: Changes in urban travel behaviour, customer perception of car ownership, and government policies support the rise of mobility services. Car manufacturing firms have joined this new service ecosystem, which is complex in nature and requires collaboration between several actors. Scholars have explored these mobility services, but knowledge about how a firm initiates and expands its mobility service network, and how the activities of the different actors are deployed within it, is still limited. Hence, this study aims to shed light on how a car manufacturing firm creates and develops its mobility service network, and to define the key actors and their activities in it. The actor-network theory framework and the document analysis theory are used to interpret the empirical observations and generate the empirical evidence, respectively. The findings reveal the evaluative process of the mobility service network and who the actors who join the network by offering their core business services are. The study concludes by presenting a new actor category, namely co-branding actors.

Keywords: actor-network theory; ANT; mobility services; manufacturing; car sharing; service innovation; co-branding.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2021.120055

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2021 Vol.40 No.4, pp.534 - 563

Received: 07 Apr 2019
Accepted: 07 Aug 2019
Published online: 06 Jan 2022 *

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