The enactment of socially embedded service systems: Fear and resourcing in the London Borough of Sutton

SummaryRecognising the importance of value-creating systems in action is vital for understanding how value is co-created through resource integration and mutual service provision. Value-creating systems are inherently dynamic and grounded in on-going human action. This article adopts structuration and enactment theory to enhance insights into how complex systems enable value co-creation. The concept of embeddedness (structural, cultural, political and cognitive) clarifies the duality of complex service system structures, in which behaviour and structure are intertwined through a process of socialisation. Actors in a complex service system act on the surrounding context and interpret the contextual responses of their actions through a sense-making process. The sense-making process then influences an actor’s mental models of the value that has been co-created, which implies a complex service system that has been socially constructed through negotiation and consensually validated through its own enactment. This study applies the framework to a case setting focused on fear of crime in the London Borough of Sutton.