Collective emotions in value co-creation within B2B service ecosystems: outlining a conceptual research agenda

Purpose Structurally and relationally similar B2B service ecosystems often produce divergent value co-creation (VCC) trajectories that existing structural, institutional and affective accounts have not been able to explain. We call this pattern structural-affective divergence. Because governance and relationship-quality indicators do not track cross-actor affective coupling, this divergence remains invisible until collaboration has eroded. This paper conceptualizes collective emotions (CE) as the meso-level affective coordination mechanism underlying this divergence, offering a diagnostic unit of analysis and develops a conceptual research agenda. Design/methodology/approach A semi-structured systematic literature review across Scopus, Web of Science and PsycINFO identified 42 publications. Using the theory-context-characteristics-methodology (TCCM) framework, the review synthesizes conceptualizations, contexts, characteristics and methods and assesses their applicability to B2B service ecosystems. Findings CE research is fragmented and methodologically misaligned with B2B service ecosystem research, leaving structural-affective divergence unexplained. The review identifies four gaps: conflation of CE with precursor constructs, a meso-level void in multi-level theorization, underspecified boundary conditions and a methodological misalignment. Addressing these gaps, the review reconstructs CE as a coordination mechanism, differentiates it from adjacent constructs through analytical markers and specifies how CE may shape resource integration trajectories ahead of formal indicators. Originality/value This research is among the first to systematically examine CE, extending service-dominant logic's actor-generated coordination logic into affective dynamics that existing accounts have theorized only at the individual or dyadic level, and providing a foundation for studying CE in long-term B2B relationships.