The relationship between Value Co-creation and Defensive Medicine

The purpose of this study is to analyse the patient-physician relationship from the perspective of its consequences in terms of risk of defensive medicine behaviour and of likelihood of value co-creation occurrence. We develop, first, a theoretically informed model which explains the patient-physician relationship in terms of the two phenomena above mentioned; we then collect qualitative empirical data, elaborate on the theory, and develop an empirically informed model. The main result of this research is the definition of four archetypes of the patient-physician relationship, whose discussion leads to theoretical contributions and managerial implications.