How do engineering suppliers create project value for buyers? A micro-foundational perspective
基于资源编排理论，通过两个工程案例比较，揭示了供应商如何通过两种互动模式（社会互动和结构互动）组织团队成员，将买方期望转化为项目价值。
Purpose Value creation in engineering projects has received considerable research attention. However, buyers’ expectations regarding project value do not always translate into the actions of project team members (actors). Drawing upon resource orchestration theory to explore the micro-foundations of project value creation (PVC), we investigate how suppliers organize project team members to create project value that meets buyers’ expectations. Design/methodology/approach We adopted two instructive engineering projects as comparative cases to analyze patterns in actor interactions in PVC. Findings The results reveal “social interaction-based value creation” and “structural interaction-based value creation,” which explain the PVC process from the collective-level buyer’s expectations and supplier’s value orientation, to individual-level actor interactions (mobilizing, connecting, and networking), knowledge orchestration activities (structuring, bundling, and leveraging), and finally the value creation process (identifying, configuring, and generating) in project teams to generate collective-level project benefits and values. Originality/value We propose a macro-approach to micro-foundations, with a focus on the buyer-expected PVC process on the supplier side. Furthermore, we explain how suppliers organize individual actions and orchestrate the individual knowledge through two patterns of individual-level actor interactions for collective-level PVC.