Intra-firm and inter-firm challenges in servitization ecosystem : Experiences from five product-centric firms in different industries

• The purpose of this paper is to analyse the challenges in the servitization journey of product-centric firms from an ecosystem perspective, considering both intra-firm and inter-firm levels. Prior research addresses the challenges of servitization in many sectors from different perspectives. However, the majority of studies primarily focus on the provider of an offering. There is a lack of in-depth studies on analysing servitization challenges from the broader set of network actors including customers, suppliers, and sub-suppliers at the intra-firm and inter-firm levels. A multiple case study method was used to analyse five product-centric firms from different industries that were engaged in servitization. At intra-firm level, our analysis shows that 'coordination' is a major challenge for the provider, supplier, and sub-suppliers, and that 'uncertainty' and 'risk' is a major challenge for the provider, customer, and supplier. At inter-firm level, 'partnership management' found to be a most significant challenge for provider, customer, supplier, and sub-suppliers. The study contributes to the discussion of the relational view approach for servitization research. 

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Business models

Circular economy

Considerations

Product-Service Systems (PSS)

Ecosystems

Risk assessment

Sales

In-depth study

Multiple-case study

Network actors

Productservice system (PSS)

Relational views

Uncertainty analysis

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)