Customer boundary work to navigate institutional arrangements around service interactions: exploring the case of telehealth

Go Jefferies, Josephine; Bishop, Simon; Hibbert, Sally

Abstract

This research extends literature on value co-creation by examining customer perspectives on institutional arrangements of service systems and how these shape customers’ efforts to navigate service interactions. Healthcare provides the empirical context for the study focusing on a digital service technology incorporated into customer interfaces. We report a qualitative inquiry carried out with 19 people with heart disease registered to a telehealth service for remote symptom monitoring. The study focuses on customer perceptions of the key differences between the healthcare system’s technological, professional and bureaucratic processes compared to family and community institutions that shape customers’ life worlds. We explain how customer perceptions shape healthcare experiences, and patterns of adaptive telehealth usage to co-create value highlighting how customers engage in boundary work. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications of applying boundary work to customer experience of digital interfaces within service systems.

Citation

Go Jefferies, J., Bishop, S., & Hibbert, S. (2019). Customer boundary work to navigate institutional arrangements around service interactions: exploring the case of telehealth. Journal of Business Research, 105, 420-433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.03.052

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 27, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Apr 17, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Deposit Date: Apr 29, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 7, 2019
• Journal: Journal of Business Research
• Print ISSN: 0148-2963
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 105
• Pages: 420-433
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.03.052
• Keywords: Healthcare; Value co-creation; Institutional theory; Transformative service research; Digital interface; Boundary work
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1848278
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319302358
• Contract Date: May 7, 2019