A Relational View on Industry 4.0 : Governing Relationships in Digital Servitization

• In the light of industry 4.0, providers are increasingly offering their industrial customers more advanced services enabled by digital technologies such as the internet of things, remote monitoring, and artificial intelligence. This trend is referred to as digital servitization, and it is enabling significant changes in how value is created and captured in industrial relationships. In order to fully benefit from digital servitization, providers and customers need to transform their relationships. However, there is limited knowledge on how a provider and a customer govern their relationship in the context of digital servitization. To address this gap, this paper applies the relational view theory as a lens for studying how dyad relationships in digital servitization can be successfully governed and transformed. To that end, research was conducted based on multiple case study of four dyadic relationships between providers and customers. In total, 40 respondents from both sides were interviewed, and data was analyzed based on thematic analysis approach to identify relevant themes and patterns. The results identify four components – complementary digitalization capabilities, relation-specific digital assets, digitally enabled knowledge-sharing routines, and partnership governance – that enable providers and customers to profit from digital servitization. The main contribution is the development of a relational governance framework for digital servitization. In doing so, we provide contribute to the servitization literature, as we advance understanding of the central role of relationship governance in digital servitization, and provide insights into the transformation of provider-customer relationships.

Ämnesord

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

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

Nyckelord

Digital Servitization

Industry 4.0

Governance

Relational View

Entreprenörskap och innovation

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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