Assessing Joint Service Opportunities through a Consideration of the Motivating and Constraining Factors

Abstract

In a wide range of industries services are increasingly being developed, or evolving, to support groups of organisations. Not all such joint service initiatives though have been successful. The paper aims to highlight potential issues that need to be addressed when investigating the introduction of a joint service by identifying the motivators and constraints. The approach outlined draws upon network externality theory to provide the motivation for a joint service, and resource based and dependency theories to highlight the constraining factors. Three instances of joint services – in the Banking, Telecommunications and Travel sectors – are subsequently examined. It is concluded that as well as providing externality benefits joint service initiatives can also improve the terms of access to a service – in particular through realising economies of scale. Furthermore it would appear that organisations will have to think carefully about the best way to create, structure and manage a joint service initiative – including who to partner with – given their own particular circumstances, as multiple alternative approaches, with potentially differing ramifications, are available.