Determinants for Value Co-creation and Collaborative paths in Complex Service Systems: A Focus on (Smart) Cities

In the last few years, service science has opened a debate on the need to adopt new approaches to better understand emerging social and economic dynamics. By following this direction, different multi- and trans-disciplinary research pathways are requesting to consider an increasing number of new variables in the management of Complex Service Systems (CSSs), underlying the fact that traditional approaches are useless in supporting decision makers in facing the challenges imposed by a more articulated scenario. To bridge this gap, the paper focuses attention on the phenomenon of ‘smart cities’ as an example of CSSs with the aim to investigate in which ways actors’ perceptions affect opportunities and willingness for value co-creation and collaborative paths. Via a survey on a random sample of 374 providers and users of city service platform in the city of Brno in Czech Republic, the actors’ perceptions were analysed and through the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) the relationships between actors’ perceptions and their willingness in building value co-creation and collaborative paths have been tested. The principal goal was to attract the attention of service community on the role of cognitive and psychological dimensions in affecting value co-creation and collaborative paths in CSS using the example of smart city as tangible evidence of CSS.