Brewing a service-identity: management controls in craft beer servitization

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the management controls that support (and fail to support) a craft brewery’s servitization journey from start-up, through growth, to maturity. It enriches our understanding of how management controls can facilitate the discovery of a service-identity that provides the foundation for servitization.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on in-depth interviews, fieldwork and secondary data analyses, this paper reports on a longitudinal case study of a craft brewery. The authors trace the case company’s servitization journey using a service-dominant logic theoretical perspective. This perspective focuses us on how the value of a product is cocreated with customers, rather than being created by the firm and then distributed.

Findings

The study found that many management controls emerged at the craft brewery from start-up to maturity. Some management controls supported a goods logic, while others supported a service logic. The findings highlight how people and cultural controls in particular enabled the company to move toward a service logic focused on servitization. These management controls informed the evolution of offerings, structure reconfiguration and resources at the craft brewery necessary to support servitization.

Originality/value

Studying a craft brewery contributes an alternative type of manufacturing context and shows how service-identity features such as craftiness, collectiveness, neolocalism and innovation affect a company’s servitization journey.

Citation

Wu, J.Y., Akroyd, C. and Ng, F. (2024), "Brewing a service-identity: management controls in craft beer servitization", Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRAM-10-2022-0172