Service Ecosystems Emergence and Interaction: A Simulation Study

Abstract

This paper describes the examination of emerging institutions and phase transition of service ecosystems in value cocreation processes under the basic tenets of service-dominant logic. We conducted several computational experiments with an agent-based model, in which we represented the generic actors and their operant resources, and examined their interactive behaviors in agent-based simulations. In the simulations, actors started changing their social properties from self-supporting individuals to reciprocal resource integraters. During the transaction, the actors increasingly specialized into specific roles and clusters of actors with the identical roles emerged – pointing towards processes of institutionalization, and dependent on the conditions of land fertility levels. Several phase transitions were observed in emerging service ecosystems, which were supported by complex structures of exchange and collaboration networks.