Boundary Decision, Embeddedness, and the Co-Creation of Value : Authors' Response to Commentary

Dr. Paul P. Maglio makes an excellent point: he calls for more research on the intersection of the firm's external capabilities and resources with those of the customer. In Rolland, Patterson, and Ward's previous paper, they created a starting point for a line of thinking similar in spirit to the firm boundary decisions that have been quite frequently addressed in the outsourcing literature. What is new about Maglio's point is that boundary decisions are less about the governance of the relationship, and that the relationship is no longer only about cooperating firms and more about customer-partners. Another argument in support of both Rolland et al's and Maglio's view, is that of customer embeddedness. An interesting point to make here is that for services where the customer is not physically embedded in the production/delivery process, increased information availability has enabled these customers to become more embedded in these services