Inter-Organizational Leadership in Healthcare—Using Digital Services, Networks, and Digital Platforms

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Firms have harnessed service-dominant logic research to understand and enhance the customer purchase journey. They’ve innovated by creating and assessing services that meet customer needs and identifying expectation gaps, which inform ongoing service development to sustain customer value. Moreover, they’ve begun to foster customer loyalty through collaborative competency and digital platforms that engage and empower customers. Healthcare organizations face particular challenges in sustaining value due to the involvement of multiple external partners in value fulfillment and assessment, all within a shifting patient ecosystem. This paper tackles these challenges by advocating for inter-organizational leadership to enhance patient health outcomes, centering on a patient value cycle aimed at specific health improvements. We utilize network theory to develop governance capabilities for collaborative competency and communication theory for resource orchestration, facilitating resource sharing with an integrated digital platform. The paper outlines a framework to create and sustain patient value within a network of health and community actors and considers how these strategies can extend to address long-term patient needs in a primary network. Finally, the paper highlights case studies from this special issue that show inter-organizational leadership in action, delivering patient value through wellness education, preventive screenings, and caregiver support for those with chronic conditions and disabilities. This sets the stage for future research into expanding these models to broader patient care contexts.