Recent debates in economic sociology have moved away from a critique to homo economicus to a focus on how market exchange is formalized and abstracted from social relations. Rather than dwell on the disparities between the formalism and the practice of market exchange, the work of Michel Callon and associates focuses on the calculating agencies that enable the creation and operation of markets. This article provides a critical examination of these ideas and argues that they have important implications for marketing theory, namely in terms of a shift from exchange as events to markets as institutions. Rather than regarding marketing practices as operating within pre-defined markets, we argue that marketing practices have a performative role in helping to create the phenomena they purportedly describe.

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Purpose-This paper proposes a new approach to operations and supply strategy in the light of recent developments in the analysis of the respective roles of products and services in delivering benefits to customers. Design/methodology/approach-Reviews and synthesises concepts from operations management (OM), marketing, economics and related areas. Examples of product and service combinations are considered, drawing attention to the ways in which services may be distinguished from products. An institutional basis for defining services is favoured over IHIP. A corollary of this is how services are made tradable: the modularity theory of the firm is used to do this. The paper then outlines, considers and compares various approaches to the combination of products and services: "service-dominant logic", support services, product-service systems, systems integration, performance-based logistics, bundling and, finally, the notion of "the offering". Findings-It is found that the notion of the business model is useful as an integrating concept. This focuses on four areas: network structure, how transactions are made, how revenue models and incentives interact and how capabilities are accessed. Implications for future research in OM are considered. Research limitations/implications-Hitherto, operations strategy (OS) has concentrated on intra-firm capabilities, which is only part of one of the four areas identified. Therefore, an extensive agenda for research into inter-firm capabilities and the other three areas identified is presented. Originality/value-This is among the first papers in OM to break completely with IHIP as a basis for service definition and to work through the implications for OS. It is also the first to develop systematically an understanding of how the emerging concept of the business model can inform OM.

 The notion of firm boundaries has received considerable attention in theories of the firm that address the problems of investment incentives and mitigation of hold-up problems. In this paper we attempt to develop a different approach to the problem of vertical firm boundaries, based on recent advances in the capabilities view of the firm. Our arguments rely on the pioneering insights of Penrose, Richardson and Loasby to elaborate a view of the boundaries determined by the interaction of the firm's direct and indirect capabilities with other actors. We develop the notion of indirect capabilities to highlight how firm boundaries respond to the distribution of capabilities in the economy as well as the modes of access to complementary and external capabilities. We conclude that the evolution of firm boundaries must be understood in the context of decisions on how the firm relates to other actors in its environment.