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Purpose
Over recent years, few industries have seen such dramatic changes as the healthcare industry. The potential connectivity of digital technologies is completely transforming the healthcare ecosystem. This has resulted in companies increasingly investing in digital transformations to exploit data across channels, operations and patient outreach, by building on a practice approach and actor-network theory and being informed by service-dominant logic, this study aims to contribute by advancing the agential role of third-party actors to prompt innovation and shape service ecosystems.


Design/methodology/approach
This research is grounded in an epistemological contextualism. To gain situated knowledge and address the role of context in knowledge, understanding and meaning the authors adopted a qualitative methodology to study actors in their different contexts. The empirical research was based on case theory. The authors also took guidance from practice scholars about how to investigate actors' practices. The unit of analysis moves from dyadic relationships to focus on practices across different networks of actors.


Findings
This study expands on the conceptualization of triad as proposed by Siltaloppi and Vargo (2017) by moving from the form of triadic relationships – brokerage, mediation and coalition – to the agency of e-health third-parties; and their practices to innovate in the healthcare ecosystem. This study focuses on the actors and the performativity of actions and grounding the conceptual view on an empirical base.


Practical implications
Third-party actors bring about innovative ways of doing business in the healthcare ecosystem. Their actions challenge the status quo and run counter to long-time practices. Third-parties support the complex set of interconnections between different healthcare actors for the provision of new service co-creation opportunities. Considering how these e-health third-parties performs has implications for health managers, patients and other actors.


Originality/value
This study focuses on the actors and the performativity of actions and grounding the conceptual view on an empirical base. The agency of third-party actors is their ability to act among others and to connect multiple social and material structures to boost innovation. They prompt innovation and shape service ecosystems by brokering, mediating and coalescing among a great variety of resources, practices and institutions.

PurposeAccording to recent developments in the literature, the spread of corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles would inevitably have a significant impact on foreign activities of multinational corporations (MNCs). Two forces seem to have influenced multinational firms' behavior: social maturity from international society and cultural evolution of political thought in several developed countries (DCs). The literature has already pointed out the importance of the multinational firm's function as a moral agent, identifying different components of respect for a sustainability management system. Based on these assumptions, the purpose of this paper is to frame MNCs' behavior within CSR, stressing the importance of a different approach to the management of local resources and stakeholders. The paper will argue for a shift of perspective concerning workers, suppliers and community, from resources to be exploited to partners and co‐creators of MNC values.Design/methodology/approachIn the research design, the authors use the case method, choosing a multiple case studies research composed of five firms, with three criteria: international firms with an international supply chain, firms with a formalized CSR management and organization process and the accessibility of firm data.FindingsIn this paper, CSR emerges as the comparative advantage concept that forms the basis of the international distribution of multinational activities, calling for a new theoretical viewpoint that necessitates a rethinking of MNCs' strategies.Originality/valueMNCs are opening toward responsible and sustainable business strategies. Workers, suppliers and communities represent the true challenge ahead, and the management of relationships with these actors is the starting point for an internationalization in a more integrated ethical and economic view.

Purpose
This paper aims to focus on how the use of new technologies disrupts markets. To date, marketing literature has lacked studies investigating the link between market practices and new technologies. The study adopts the blockchain technology (BcT) context to elicit novel technology-enhanced market practices.


Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopt a qualitative multimethod research design to engage in interpretative theorizing. They investigated 77 companies and used the Gioia method for the data coding and analysis.


Findings
The study of the adoption of blockchain prompts three technology-enhanced market practices. The latter offers new ways of resourcing by removing constraints and expanding actors' network and knowledge to integrate resources; sensemaking by expressing new language and assigning novel meaning to represent markets; and legitimizing, by structuring new rules and trusting new mechanisms to institutionalize markets.


Research limitations/implications
The technology-enhanced market practices are distinct from extant market practices as well as related, thus, enriching and complementing them. Therefore, this work expands the understanding of the mechanisms of how markets work.


Originality/value
This study is the first, to the best of the authors' knowledge, to focus on how BcT features affect market practices. BcT market practices entail how actors perform, share and interpret symbols and objects and set rules for how markets should work.

Purpose
COVID-19 has dramatically changed how people live, socialise and think about their future. The disruptive shock that hit societies all over the world had a significantly negative impact on businesses, creating not only economic discontinuity but also uncertainty and disorientation. This special issue on COVID-19 aims to phrase the pandemic crisis and its impact on how to do business.


Design/methodology/approach
The authors follow MacInnis's (2011) suggestion that a conceptual article sees what others have identified in a new or revised way.


Findings
The authors develop the crisis management framework. The authors acknowledge that disruptive events may be repeated, and their consequences will have long-term and permanent impacts. These aspects highlight the need for a systemic approach in which the focus is not limited to an analysis of the cause of the crisis and ways of solving it but includes the paths through which the business, economic and social systems evolve because of the crisis.


Practical implications
Managerial policies, business models and practices that have been effective up to now will probably no longer work. Beyond this backdrop, the articles compiled in this special issue aim to help set the agenda for post-COVID business research


Originality/value
The authors identify four primary themes captured by these articles: strategies, capabilities, organisational transformations and value processes. In their entirety, they represent pieces of a conceptual puzzle that do not provide knowledge of "hard facts" but rather a "soft interpretation of how to approach the "new normal", i.e. a new social and business context.

Purpose
The COVID-19 wave spread all over the global market, affecting all industries. This paper aims to develop the understanding of how service systems can enhance their viability when facing rapid systemic changes.


Design/methodology/approach
The authors use data from Reddit, and particularly the subreddit r/coronavirus, to identify posts that discuss the impact of coronavirus on business. The authors use an algorithm to scrape the data with business-related search terms and elaborate relevant posts.


Findings
The findings show key topics and related sentiments on the impact of COVID-19 on business. Service systems can enhance viability by identifying alternative paths for emerging opportunities (by being creative), seize opportunities offered by the changing environment (by being opportunistic), not compromise conditions for internal balance (by being resilient), focus attention on critical purposes (by being essential) and perform nonharmful actions (by being responsible).


Originality/value
This paper proposes a framework depicting five possible key enhancers of viability to face a systemic crisis. In brief, companies need to ensure that they are creative, opportunistic, resilient, essential and responsible.