Pathways towards Servitization: A trans-national study of Organisational Transformation

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Manufacturing organisations in developed western economies are increasingly shifting from traditional product-based offerings towards service-oriented business models. Firms such as Rolls Royce, GE, Xerox and Siemens are remaining competitive by creating additional value to their customers through the services they provide, and taking a share of this value. Over the years, providing services embedded within products' offerings has gradually become a fundamental business constituent for manufacturing organisations. Understanding the organisational transformation required to operate in this way has been an enduring challenge to both researchers and practitioners, and only a few notable contributions address the topic. Some prominent scholars have set out the benefits of, and barriers to, undertaking the transformation , while others describe the state of being a 'servitized' manufacturer and the impact this delivers, but few really deal holistically with the dynamics of the process of transformation itself, or distinguish what is particular about servitization over general organisational change. Although there are significant literature and theoretical frameworks in the general field of organisational change, no models exist to explain the servitization transformation process.This project addresses this gap by consolidating the servitization knowledge base from the perspective of organisational change. Our integrative approach in this project will complement our goal of conducting a broad and inclusive study of the servitization transformation, which leads to identifying the stages of transformation, the key factors and forces that influence such transformation, and the key tasks and decisions in each stage. The purpose of the project is, therefore, to document the transformation of a manufacturing organisation as it moves towards competing through advanced services. In order to do this, the following research questions will be addressed:(i) What stages might an organisation expect to go through as it progresses towards servitization? What are the critical decisions and activities that occur in each stage? (Process)(ii) What are the principal factors and forces that affect progression through these stages? (Context) (iii) How do these stages and forces interplay as a model to demonstrate pathways towards servitization? (Content)