Unravelling the internal and external drivers of digital servitization: A dynamic capabilities and contingency perspective on firm strategy

TLDR: In this article, a dynamic capabilities lens was used to examine the relationship between two organizational mechanisms (exploitation and exploration) and firms' orientation towards digitization, servitization, and digital servitisation.

About: This article is published in Industrial Marketing Management.The article was published on 2020-08-01 and is currently open access. It has received 92 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Dynamic capabilities.

Figures

Fig. 3. Exploration on digital servitization at three levels of exploitation.

Table 1 Overview responses.

Table 2 Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations.

Table 7 Linear regression results for digital servitization (additive measure).

Table 4 Moderator values defining Johnson-Neyman significance regions.

Table 3 Linear regression results for digitization.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Unravelling the internal and external drivers of digital servitization_ a dynamic capabilities and contingency perspective on firm strategy" ?

On top, the authors examine the influence of two environmental contingencies – technological turbulence and competitive intensity – as potential influencers of these relationships. The authors collected and analyzed data of 139 Belgian firms through hierarchical regressions. As managerial implications, the authors suggest that firms pay close attention to adapting their strategy to fit an increasingly changing environment. 

Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "Unravelling the internal and external drivers of digital servitization_ a dynamic capabilities and contingency perspective on firm strategy" ?

As opportunities for further research, a potentially fruitful next step is to consider the drivers of different types of digitization, servitization and digital servitization. For instance, future studies could draw from previous scales from the literature, such as the one developed by Partanen, Kohtamäki, Parida, and Wincent ( 2017 ) on different service offerings, and Jayachandran, Sharma, Kaufman, and Raman ( 2005 ) on different levels of digitalization, which have also been used recently to investigate the relationship with firms ' financial performance ( Kohtamäki et al., 2020 ). Such studies may provide further insights into the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firms ' orientation towards different types of service offerings ( Kowalkowski et al., 2015 ) and digitization levels, respectively. Another opportunity is to further look into the effects of digital servitization on performance, taking into account the relationship between different capabilities and environments. 

Q3. what is the explanation for exploitative firms?

One possible explanation is that exploitative firms prefer to deal with an increasingly competitive environment by focusing on their core business, thus spending less efforts on developing new ideas for integrated offerings. 

Q4. Why do the authors combine dynamic capabilities with a contingency theory?

In fact, the purpose of dynamic capabilities is to provide firms the ability to deal with increasingly changing environments (Ambrosini & Bowman, 2009; Teece et al., 1997). 

Q5. What are the variables that are available for the final sample?

For their final sample, the authors consider the cases for which the dependent, independent, moderating and control variables of their conceptual framework are available.