Towards Sustainable Value Creation in The Beauty Service Ecosystem: Connecting Tensions and Systemic Sustainability Outcomes

Purpose: The beauty industry, like most other industries, face sustainability challenges related to the transition towards a more sustainable service economy. The sustainability challenges have been described as wicked problems where a multidisciplinary and co-creating approach is needed, in order to create sustainable service ecosystems (Field et al., 2021). Furthermore, these challenges entail inherent contradictions, giving rise to tensions (e.g., Smith and Lewis, 2011; Hahn et al., 2015). Previous literature has identified generic organizational tensions (Smith and Lewis, 2011) whereof some particular for corporate sustainability (Hahn et al., 2015). However, there still exists a need to better understand, from a descriptive point of view, industry specific tensions and how they are managed, but particularly, from an instrumental standpoint, the relation between these tensions and the systemic sustainability outcomes they generate (Hahn et al., 2018). By taking a service view on corporate sustainability tensions as arising from multiple resource integrating actors in a service ecosystem (Vargo and Lusch, 2011), we aim to further such an understanding. The research fields on corporate sustainability tensions and sustainable service tend both have a distinct system view in common (e.g., Hahn et al., 2015; Field et al., 2021). As sustainability issues tend to be highly complex and intricate in nature, varying in temporal and spatial dimensions and spanning organizational boundaries, the systems imprint allows for a broader view and recognizing interconnections. Therefore, in this paper, we adopt a service ecosystem view to gain a deeper understanding of the tension in the beauty industry, how they are managed, and the corporate sustainability outcomes they give rise to. Study design/Methodology/Approach: The study adopts a qualitative methodology based on 24 in-depth interviews with several key informants in the beauty service ecosystem, later analyzed using an abd