Customer integration has received considerable attention in the service literature in order to foster service innovations (e.g. Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Chan, Yim & Lam 2010; Yim, Chan & Lam, 2012; Grönroos & Voima, 2013). The changing role of the customer from being a passive consumer to becoming an active contributor during service provision and co-creator has a significant impact on numerous service firms. Customer integration is essential to many services and successful integration improves service experience of the customer and it allows development of new services in particular (Magnusson, Matthing & Kristensson, 2003; Melton & Hartline, 2010). Against this background, service industries nowadays face the challenge of dealing with new customer and employee roles in times of digitalization, increasing customer activity, changing interaction channels, and development of new business model. While the impact of employee’s customer stewardship on the employee-customer relationship has been investigated in prior studies, is unclear whether an employee’s commitment to the customer also motivates the employee to contribute to service innovation development.We propose that an employee’s level of customer stewardship represents an important requirement for organizational learning about understanding customer needs and to uncover future trends. Based on stewardship and agency theory, we develop a conceptual model proposing that idea generation, articulation, and implementation depend on employee-related factors (e.g., employee stewardship), structural factors (e.g., incentive system), and control-related factors (e.g., monitoring system). Hypotheses are tested using survey data from 390 frontline employees in financial services. Results underline the important roles of employee stewardship and organizational commitment. Insights provide managers guidance how to improve motivation of frontline employees to engage in these important behaviors.

• Julia Rugen(Zeppelin University, Germany)
• Christian Brock(University of Rostock, Germany)
• Markus Blut(Newcastle University Business School, UK)