Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of contracts in long‐term relationship building comparing public and private contexts. In order to investigate this, the paper addresses literature about relationship building, negotiation process and the role of...

Purpose – This paper is about service innovation processes and especially about how an idea about a new service proposition is realized and gradually transformed during the process. The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the process by which the idea of what should be developed...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how contracts are used to build and develop long‐term relationships in contexts where trust cannot be expected in advance – i.e. there is a lack of initial trust. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a qualitative...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of how individually designed services are actually developed in small companies. Design/methodology/approach – This study focuses on a small number of enterprises over a relatively long period. The study has been using a...

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to create an initial understanding of how various internal and external actors contribute to the development of new services based on the research question considering “which different actor takes part in small companies’ service development processes...