From Technological Transitions to Service Transitions : A Study of Attenuation Effects in IT Service Provisioning

In a day and age when contemporary businesses are transformed, driven by a service-dominance logic and dependent upon IT, we need to understand how firms cope with technological adaptations and how such technological adaptations can lead to service adaptations. Drawing on a framework on technological transitions and an interpretive longitudinal case study of the services provided by a team within a large public IT firm, this article addresses the following questions：How do service transitions come about? Can we distinguish particular patterns in service transition processes? This research unveils how technological and social dimensions mutually constitute each other within development and implementation of service provisioning. The findings show how：(a) IT plays a fundamental role in service provisioning; (b) technological transitions are the necessary but insufficient preconditions for service transi-tions; and (c) there are attenuation effects when it comes to the move from technology transition to service transition.