Globalisation and competition from low-cost countries has pushed manufacturing firms towards offering services to remain competitive. However, increasing the service orientation of a manufacturing firm to find new ways of value (co-)creation has presented several challenges, such as the fact that services do not provide the expected revenues, and resistance from both the sales force and from customers towards services. The aim of this thesis is to understand challenges linked to increasing service orientation in manufacturing firms, by means of goods and service business logics. The thesis emphasises the three dimensions of business logics – value perspective, service business strategy, and service offering – and studies them empirically in service divisions in the pulp and paper industry and in the automotive industry. The findings show that firms with inconsistency between the three dimensions face certain challenges. Most often, the firms have a value perspective of goods business logic, but a service business strategy and a service offering of service business logic. Therefore, the most important and most difficult challenge to overcome in order to increase a manufacturing firm’s service orientation is the employees’ value perspective. Three service manoeuvres were key to overcoming this challenge: changing employees’ mind-sets, starting to value services, and separating products and services. Although separating products and services could be assessed as a service manoeuvre consistent with goods business logic, it facilitated an increased service orientation. The fact that goods business logic manoeuvres led to a higher degree of service orientation, whereas service business logic manoeuvres did not always do so, is discussed as a service orientation paradox.

Market research is a crucial element in a firm’s internationalization process. Expanding into new markets comes with a variety of challenges and high risk of failure which ultimately would impact a firm’s finances negatively. In order to reduce the uncertainty of entering foreign markets, market research is conducted. It aims to collect information and thereby is supposed to help a firm’s decision- making on market entry. However, firms commonly face the issue of having either too much or too little information of a market. This study pursues to identify the information, also known as decision criteria, for Swedish manufacturing firms that seek international market development. This may give firms a superior understanding of important decision criteria when there is an information overload. In addition to that, this study investigates the sources of information which may be useful if too little information is available. Through the research approach – case study – this paper provides in-depth explanations of the how firms conduct market research. It shows that the internet is a useful tool to unveil multiple decision criteria. Moreover, networks are introduced as a source of information which previous scholars have not discussed sufficiently. Using networks complements the internet in a good manner since it information through networks is more detailed and prescriptive, as opposed to the internet which entails objective information.

abstract: Most advanced economies have evolved into service economies with the majority of their activity and jobs being in the service sector. The manufacturing sector is also going through a similar shift towards services. Manufacturers are increasingly complementing their products with new services in order to satisfy a broader array of customer needs and increase the value of their offerings. This shift has offered significant opportunities to the sector and the success of major firms such as IBM, Caterpillar, and Rolls-Royce in competing through services has been remarkable. Despite the increased importance of services in the manufacturing sector, the academic literature is yet to investigate the many questions that arise under this new manufacturing paradigm. Perhaps for the same reason study of servitization is listed as a research priority in recent publications both in the field of service operations management and in the field services marketing. This dissertation covers three essays aimed at disentangling multiple aspects of the role of services in the manufacturing sector. The literature on the drivers and implications of transition towards services in manufacturing firms is limited. The three studies in this dissertation aim at shedding light on this issue. Specifically, the first essay looks at the innovation benefits of service transactions with customers. This paper demonstrate the value of services in getting manufacturers closer to customers and allowing them glean useful information from their service interactions. The second essay investigates the antecedents of service strategy adoption. We suggest that the extant diversification theory does not fully explain servitization and this phenomenon represents a unique type of diversification, which is likely driven by different factors. Through econometric analysis of financial data over a 27-year period, this study explores characteristics of product, firm resources, competition, and industry that encourage adoption of service strategies in manufacturing sector. Finally, the third essay takes a deeper dive and focuses on dealerships, as service centers, in the automobile industry. It investigates the role of dealerships in the success of automakers and explores dealership traits that are critical for market success of an automobile brand. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2018

Digitalization has in many ways transformed the value offering for companies in several industries. Now a days, most manufacturing companies face the challenge to understand how to form their business models to ensure that it reflects the real value of a digital solution. A company with a traditional structure will most probably struggle with today’s constant need of business model renewal, where the business models of today should be more flexible and adapted to long term opportunities. In this qualitative extensive case study, the authors aim is to further explore values created by digital solutions and digital transformation of business models in manufacturing companies.  The result includes a framework of the most prominent values created by digital solutions and how they affect the business models in manufacturing companies. The empirical findings show that developing a business ecosystem with the customer as provider of the data is key for digitally transforming the business model. The value of data facilitates the process of developing comprehensive product-service systems in order to provide values such as availability and proactive abilities.

Abstract  Background: Crisis management has become a highly relevant topic by virtue of the COVID- 19 pandemic. As a result, organizations have been forced to implement preventive actions to mitigate its impact. One of these implementations has been the enforced advancements for companies to readjust their businesses remotely. With remote working being a rather seldomly used practice for most organizations, managers are encouraged to enact and adopt quickly for their business to continue.  Purpose: This thesis aims to explore how managers of Swedish manufacturing firms handle organizational crises in a remote-working environment.  Method: This research follows a qualitative research method with an abductive approach. The findings are retrieved from conducted semi-structured interviews with eight managers in two different companies, which is then connected to relevant literature.  Conclusion: Findings show of great importance for managers to focus on communication with their employees. Implications of the crisis are ambiguous. Manufacturing firms in Sweden have experienced increased productivity at the expense of their employee’s well-being. Given that the future point towards increased usage of remote working, it is crucial for managers to focal their business on combining the benefits with the drawbacks and thereby successfully adjust to a digital working environment.

The organizational facets of JIT are investigated for 130 US manufacturing firms. Five research hypotheses are formulated and tested. The results of this research are presented in the context of a conceptual framework which attempts to shed some light on the organizational facets relevant to successful JIT implementation.

In this thesis the relation between gender diversity and innovation in technology and manufacturing companies is explored. Data on firm-level are used from The Enterprise Surveys of the World Bank, which are designed as a panel data survey and comprise a collection of data on 146,000 firms in 143 countries, from years 2006 to 2019. Our focus group is technology and manufacturing firms, therefore, the final data used comprises of 8,839 firms in 47 countries for the year 2013 to investigate whether gender diversity is positively related to innovation of technology and manufacturing firms. Binary logistic regression analysis is used due to the nature of the available data measuring innovation output, which is the survey answer whether a firm introduced a new product/process or not. There are controversies in current research findings caused by the classification of incremental and radical innovation, therefore, this thesis takes an inclusive approach that accounts for total innovation (both incremental and radical). We also assess the total innovation in terms of new products and processes. Gender diversity is measured as total gender diversity of the permanent full-time employees and also on top management level. We also control for industry type, firm size, firm structure, firm’s export activity, R&D investment and employee training. The results show that there are currently low levels of gender inclusion on various firm levels globally. The regression analysis shows that only female presence on top management level made a unique statistically significant contribution to the model, and not total gender diversity on employee level. Regarding the control variables, only firm size, having invested in R&D, and offering employee training made a unique statistically significant contribution to the model. Conclusively, we found that gender diversity on top management level is positively related to innovation performance of technology and manufacturing firms, but not on employee level. However, due to the nature of panel data surveys when it is not possible to lag the cause with respect to the effect, a ‟cause-effect” relationship cannot be deduced with confidence. Nevertheless, our results are in line with the existing theory which indicates that gender diversity on leadership level may have a small but positive effect on achieving firm goals and innovative ideas-decisions-strategies. An explanation why we did not find a positive relationship on employee level can be the fact that during the innovation process the role of individuals and thus gender is invisible - hidden within processes, organizations, systems and there is lack of separating creativity from implementation; employee diversity might improve the creative process but impede the implementation. It is probably easier to assess the role of individuals on top management level and compare the effect of different leadership styles across companies. For external observers this assessment seems more complicated on employee level, thus the benefits of gender diversity even on employee level should not be underestimated. Therefore, more gender diversified quota and policies may need to be taken by decision makers with potentially positive impact both on society and economy. The relationship between innovation and gender diversity is a rather complex subject, affected by many internal and external firm contexts. By accounting for control variables including firm size, structure, export activity, R&D investment, employee training and industry type, some possible causal factors are eliminated. As prior research has already indicated, other factors that have not been addressed yet (and not covered by our framework either) are firm level structures, capabilities, innovation strategies, management style, team structure-functional diversity.

Much of the literature on investment-cash flow sensitivity examines only manufacturing firms, uses capital expenditure as a measure of investment, and uses operating cash flow as a measure of internal funds. Over the last several decades, due to outsourcing, the importance of manufacturing firms in the U.S. economy and the importance of capital expenditure as the primary type of investment have declined. The introduction of the Nasdaq exchange allowed smaller, less-profitable, and more human-capital intensive firms to become public, lowering the importance of operating cash flow as the primary source of internal funds. To take into account these trends, I introduce three innovations to the prior literature. (i) I include non-manufacturing firms. (ii) I broaden the definition of investment to include R&D and SG&A (which are both investments in human capital required at the innovation and marketing stages of the product life cycle), cash investment in subsidiaries and joint ventures, and the cash used to finance acquisitions. (iii) I broaden the definition of internal funds to include cash holding available at the beginning of the year. Empirically, non-manufacturing firms are more capital intensive than non-manufacturing firms, and hence excluding these firms could understate the true investment-cash flow sensitivity. Capital expenditure understates true investment, and hence excluding other forms of investment could also understate the true investment-cash flow sensitivity. Finally, operating cash flow understates true internal funds, and excluding cash holdings could overstate the true investment-cash flow sensitivity. The net effect of my proposed changes on the sensitivity is, therefore, an empirical issue. Overall, I document that investment is highly sensitive to cash flow––it is 570% higher than what I estimate using the definitions in prior literature––and this higher sensitivity is primarily caused by broadening the definition of investment. Further, though the sensitivity declines over time, the decline is modest and, importantly, the sensitivity is still economically and statistically significant in recent years. I identify three factors that have contributed to this decline: (i) the decline in Fed Funds rate (ii) changing firm characteristics and, (iii) changing firm composition. The changing characteristics and changing composition of firms are possibly due to macro trends such as outsourcing and the introduction of Nasdaq exchange. While outsourcing reduced firms’ capital expenditure, the introduction of the Nasdaq facilitated listing of less profitable and more human-capital intensive firms. Such firms are likely to invest more in R&D and SG&A and are less reliant on operating cash flow for their investment. These macro trends altered firms’ investment and cash flow mix, specifically decreasing the investment-cash flow ratio, which, in turn, contributed to the decrease in investment-cash flow sensitivity. / Business Administration/Finance

No / The purpose of this paper is to theorise and develop seven dimensions (strategic supplier partnership, level of information sharing, quality of information sharing, customer service management, internal lean practices, postponement and total quality management) into a supply chain management (SCM) practices (SCMPs) construct and studies its causal relationship with the conceptualised constructs of supply chain performance (SCP) and manufacturing firms’ performance (MFP). The study also explores the causal relationship between SCP and MFP. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire responded by 249 Jordanian manufacturing firms. The relationships proposed in the developed theoretical framework were represented through three hypotheses: H1 – there is a significant relationship between SCMPs and SCP; H2 – there is a significant relationship between SCMPs and MFP; and H3 – there is a significant relationship between SCP and MFP. Linear regression, ANOVA and Pearson correlation were used to test the hypotheses. The results were further validated using structural equation modelling. The results indicate that SCMPs have a positive effect on SCP (H1), which in turn also positively affect MFP (H3). Despite this intermediary positive effect of SCMP on MFP through SCP, the study also suggests that SCMPs have a direct and positive effect on MFP (H2). This study provides hard evidence indicating that higher levels of SCMPs can lead to enhanced supply chain and firms’ performance. It also provides SC managers of manufacturing firms with a multi-dimensional operational measure of the construct of SCMPs for assessing the comprehensiveness of the SCMPs of their firms. This study is among the very first SCM researches conducted on the Jordanian manufacturing sector, particularly, in relation to the practices that manufacturing firms in this country need to adopt to make their supply chains a solid competitive vehicle for their development. The results have broader implications for all manufacturing companies, particularly in developing economies where the growth of manufacturing and the development of integrated supply chains are key stages in economic development.

Yes / Achieving energy efficiency through adoption of energy management practices remain top priorities among industry. Studies focusing on energy management practices are scarce and this area needs to be focused. Building on the perspective of resource-based view and behavioral theory of corporate governance, the purpose of the study is to develop and test an integrative framework linking manufacturing firm's energy management practices (EMPs) to environmental and financial performance through mediating roles played by energy efficiency and audit. The moderating role played by the top management commitment is further examined. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypotheses alongside Hayes' PROCESS to check moderation effects. Results from a survey of 637 employees working in Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) of Indian manufacturing firms indicate that EMPs result into increased environmental as well as financial performance of the firm. It was also found that energy efficiency mediates the relationship between the adoption of EMPs and environmental performance, amplified by top management commitment. Further, energy audit mediates the effect of EMPs on energy efficiency. The study contributes to offering the new research directions to identify alternatives that monetises environmental concepts such as energy efficiency, leading to higher performance of SMEs. / The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 20 Dec 2022.