Search results

The purpose of this paper is to bring new insight into the barriers of service business development in installed base manufacturing companies by studying the transformation from an organisational culture perspective. It proposes a new framework that can be used both in studying the transition and in supporting the change within an organisation.

A case study‐based approach was applied together with conceptual work based on literature in order to construct the framework. The study was carried out in two manufacturing companies and the framework was tested on four other occasions. The data collection methods included interviews, organisational culture surveys and workshops.

The paper provides a service culture and capability framework with tentative descriptions of transformations in the basic elements needed to facilitate the significant progress of a service business. It also gives empirical examples of how the transformation can manifest itself in organisational culture.

The framework is promising, but further research is needed in terms of theoretical and empirical validation.

The paper contributes to supporting the transformation from a product‐oriented culture towards a more customer‐oriented and service‐oriented culture. It suggests that the transformation can be facilitated by exploring and communicating new core task demands and synchronised development of customer relations, management, service development practices and service business understanding. It argues that this is also a possibility for renewing an entire organisation and improving its readiness for the future.

This paper offers an essential, but little known organisation culture perspective to the theoretical discussion on industrial service business development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how collaborative service development in a public-private citizen innovation network can be approached as an organizational learning process. Although the importance of learning in networks has been highlighted in earlier studies, the actual processes and outcomes have remained less studied, especially in the public service context.

The approach taken is based on the theory of expansive learning. The empirical data were gathered in a qualitative case study that focused on a public service organization developing new activities for unemployed youth. The network around this focal organization consisted of citizens as end-users, private employers and a facilitating consultancy company.

The findings illustrate how and what was learned in the complex network setting and how this learning created potential for collaborative service development in the future. Importantly, the public service organization started to perceive itself as an active agent enhancing collaboration.

The study revealed important interfaces between service development, organizational learning, and innovation activities in networks. This observation is in line with the service-dominant logic, particularly with its focus on actor-to-actor relationships in value co-creation.

The importance of facilitation – particularly for the emergence of the agency of the focal organization – should be taken into account in the development of networked service innovations.

This study illustrates how expansive learning theory may contribute on deepening understanding of the practical collaboration processes, as well as conceptual aims and outcomes of networked service innovations.

This article aims to adopt a complementary line of reasoning by investigating the problems that manufacturers can face when providing services in different countries. Studies of the relationship between products and services have focused on concept, model and classification propositions; the importance of building relationships with clients; and approaches for bundling services and products.

A qualitative, multi-case research design was employed. The authors aim was to study similar services provided by the same company in different countries. The authors investigated the six most important service units of a company that sells 1.2 billion/year. This approach differs from the majority of the previous studies conducted at the global level (multiple case studies and/or distinct business sectors).

The provision of service in different countries may face some challenges in the capital goods industry. Such challenges arise from the following elements: regulations that protect the local service companies from the competition with the manufacturers; operational problems (employee turnover, the distance between resources and clients and a shared structure between service providers and the factory); the manufacturer culture (goods-dominant logic prevail over the services-dominant logic); commercial approaches (lack of an open relationships between the manufacturer and the client in unforeseen situations, a poor understanding about how each customer can generate revenues and profits in the long run, the contract rigidity and a single sales team to sell products and services); and the poor knowledge presented by the manufacturer about the value demands of their customers (includes the acquisition, dissemination and utilization of the knowledge).

The research findings are limited in generalizability because of the qualitative research methodology.

Manufacturers of the capital goods must understand the constraints that limit the sales of services around the world. Such understanding will help them to redesign their value offerings, as well as their operational structure. Aiming to support them during the revision process, a preliminary model for global service management was included at the end of the article.

The study contributes to the debate regarding the provision of global services. The analysis of the findings unveils some avenues for future studies, namely: alternatives for reducing the turnover of the service teams; alternatives to mitigate the conflicts between the service department and the other company departments (engineering and manufacturing); methods to evaluate how and when local competitors can generate gains to the manufacturer; alternatives to mitigate the customer’s concerns arising from the service outsourcing (e.g. reduction of their knowledge about the products maintenance); and methods to acquire, disseminate and utilize the knowledge required to improve the global service operations.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretically and empirically grounded interdisciplinary framework for understanding service innovation in a business-to-business (b-to-b) context, particularly from the perspective of the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME).

This study used an abductive research process, supported by theoretical insights from a literature review, and empirical evidence from a multiple-case study. Six SME case companies were all transforming towards service logic. The empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews with the case companies and their business customers, workshops and business documents.

The study identified four critical service logic-related perspectives in service innovation in a b-to-b context, and related key questions: How is potential for new service business recognised? How is freedom of action perceived? What kinds of strategies are plausible? What are the reasons, objectives and support for the change? The shared interpretation of these questions within an organisation seemed to be related to the company’s success in doing business in new ways, enhancing service innovations and in their transformation to service logic.

This article offers a new interdisciplinary and empirically grounded perspective on innovation in the b-to-b and SME context framing the phenomenon in service logic. Tackling the questions is a precondition for SMEs in enhancing service orientation in strategy, mutual value orientation in organisational culture, their role in others’ business and collaborative business development, thus enhancing service innovations producing reciprocal value-in-use over time.