An organizational change framework for digital servitization: Evidence from the Veneto region

Abstract

Product firms implementing integrated product/service solutions through in-house development must have a long-term commitment to the project and focus on enhancing their resource base and strategic agility. Our results confirm the importance of organizational capabilities and strong firm commitment to the development of integrated solutions. While previous studies have demonstrated the importance of the service business unit's configuration, this article identifies critical variables (the firm's strategic agility and capability) that influence make-or-buy decisions.Agility is a prerequisite for digital organizational transformation, and our results corroborate that weak firm agility is closely linked to the need for external development of integrated solutions.

Uncovering the role of cross-border strategic alliances and expertise decision centralization in enhancing product-service innovation in MMNEs

“…Strategic partnerships are important enablers of product-service innovation, and recent research demonstrates that firms involved in strategic partnerships tend to perform better than firms with in-house service development (Bustinza et al, 2017a). The rationale behind this result is that, by outsourcing the service function to external partners, manufacturers not only obtain know-how but also limit the degree of organizational change involved in setting the service function in-house (Bustinza, Gomes, Vendrell-Herrero, & Tarba, 2018). Indeed, management of this (internal) organizational change has been acknowledged as one of the main causes for the high bankruptcy rate observed in servitized manufacturers (Benedettini et al, 2015), implying that establishing strategic partnerships with KIBS lowers manufacturers' need for centralization to undertake product-service innovation.…”

FDI, service intensity, and international marketing agility

“…Furthermore, those manufacturing sectors with higher service intensity have higher firm performance (Crozet and Milet, 2017), leveraging performance on manufacturing enterprises that compete in higher R&D industries (Bustinza et al, 2017a). Service intensity has contributed to increase firm performance in different environments in both Western (Bustinza et al, 2018) and non-Western contexts (Li et al, 2015). Therefore, it seems that service intensity develops particular and distinctive capabilities in the manufacturing enterprises that help them: it helps them to cope with market discontinuities, to better adapt in high R&D competitive markets, and to compete in international markets.…”

Unpacking the effect of strategic ambidexterity on performance: A cross-country comparison of MMNEs developing product-service innovation

“…PSI requires a critical organizational transformation of MMNEs incorporating new services into their traditional product offerings (Bustinza, Vendrell-Herrero, & Baines, 2017b). This organizational transformation is location dependent (Cano-Kollmann et al, 2016) and contextual to economic regions (Khan, Lew, & Marinova, 2018;Bustinza, Gomes, Vendrell-Herrero, & Tarba, 2018a). Furthermore, considering strategic intent, recent studies show that PSI enables DMMNEs to escape from price-based competition (Tukker & Halen, 2003;Rabetino, Harmsen, Kohtamäki, & Sihvonen, 2018),…”