T his paper extends research on innovation as institutional change within service science and service-dominant (S-D) logic by conceptualizing the emergence of novel solutions in service ecosystems. We pay particular attention to how actors (individuals and organizations) are able to create new solutions that change the very institutional arrangements that guide and constrain them. We propose that institutional complexity-the multiplicity of institutional arrangements confronting actors with conflicting prescriptions for action-drives the emergence of novelty. Institutional complexity reduces the influence of prevailing institutions by activating conscious problem solving and making available multiple institutional "toolkits." These dynamic toolkits consist of the cultural norms and meanings, as well as material practices, associated with specific institutional arrangements, with which actors can jointly reconstruct and change value cocreation practices and advance change in the institutional arrangements of service ecosystems. This paper contributes to service science and S-D logic by providing a more comprehensive understanding of innovation driven by institutional complexity, in which the stability of institutional arrangements is reconciled with the actor-driven creation of novel solutions constitutive of institutional change.

Integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) into a for-profit organization's business activities is fraught with tensions. This paper reports a case study of a construction company, exploring how different tensions emerged to challenge companylevel aspirations for strategic CSR integration. The study identifies three types of persistent CSR tensions and four management practices, discussing how the management practices led the organization to navigate CSR tensions in both active and defensive ways. Furthermore, the study explicates why the case company succeeded in integrating CSR into formal business strategy and shared attitudes but struggled with CSR integration in the domain of day-today operations. The paper contributes to the CSR literature by developing a tension-centric perspective on CSR development. It highlights the necessity of tension navigation at both the organizational and the action levels, the key role of active (as opposed to defensive) navigation of CSR tensions, and the importance of alignment between organizational and action levels in navigating tensions for sustaining strategic focus on CSR over time.

Triads examine the associations among three actors, involving, at a minimum, the analysis of two dyadic ties among three interrelated actors. By making apparent the indirect ties bearing on actors, the triad is the smallest unit of analysis for a network. Despite extensive conceptual and empirical work, little systematic attention is given to the triad in the marketing literature. This article reviews literature spanning multiple academic disciplines and makes three contributions. First, it provides an overview of the triad concept combining sociological insights with more recent work emerging in operations management and marketing. Second, the article identifies three distinct forms of triadic relationships in existing literature: (1) brokerage, focused on the action of the third between two others; (2) mediation, describing different mechanisms by which a dyadic relationship affects and is affected by a relationship with a third party; and (3) coalition, capturing the configuration and evolution of ties in the three-actor system as a whole. Finally, this article develops an initial research agenda for triadic marketing research.

Purpose -Only a few concepts in the service literature are as pervasive yet as undertheorized as is the concept of the actor. With a growing interest toward value creation as a systemic and institutionally guided phenomenon, there is a particular need for a more robust conceptualization of humans as actors that adopts a processual, as opposed to a static, view. The purpose of this paper is to build such processual conceptualization to advance service-dominant (S-D) logic, in particular, and service research, in general. Design/methodology/approach -The paper is conceptual and extends S-D logic's institutionally constituted account of the actor by drawing from identity theory and social constructionism. Findings -The paper develops a processual conceptualization of the human actor that explicates four social processes explaining the dynamics between two identity concepts-social and personal identity-and institutional arrangements. The resulting framework reveals how humans are simultaneously constituted by institutions and able to perform their roles in varying, even institution-changing, ways. Research limitations/implications -By introducing new insights from identity theory and social constructionism, this paper reconciles the dualism in S-D logic's current description of actors, as well as posits the understanding of identity dynamics and the processual nature of actors as central in many service-related phenomena. Originality/value -This paper is among the few that explicitly theorize about the nature of human actors in S-D logic and the service literature.

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