Product-oriented firms are increasingly moving towards providing services to customers in a bid to differentiate their offerings, increase customer loyalty, and achieve higher, more stable revenue streams. This trend of servitization is becoming ubiquitous in manufacturing firms. These firms increasingly invest resources in efforts to offer basic and advanced services. Basic services focus on supporting the functioning of the product and increasing its efficiency. But advanced services focus on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes. Providing advanced services holds potential of greater benefits for the manufacturing firms, but a closer look indicates that most firms still largely offer basic services. This is because, advanced services demand greater intensity in relationships with customers, a higher degree of customization, and a sharper focus on assisting customers in their own value creation processes.   Offering advanced services is more risky, complex, and difficult to execute. Therefore, significant changes must be made in terms of company culture, structures, processes, capabilities, and business models. In fact, servitizing firms must transform almost every aspect of the way they do business – from their business strategy to their capabilities, organizational structure, culture, mindset, and business logic. This transformation towards advanced services therefore affects all levels of the firm: strategic, operational, and individual levels. Although prior studies have explored many aspects of the challenges involved in the transformation towards advanced services, they typically focus on function-specific practices without linking initiatives at other organizational levels. The literature lacks a multilevel understanding of the transformation process. Such an understanding could provide a better understanding of the transformation process, linking various aspects at multiple levels within the firm. To address this gap, this dissertation aims to improve our understanding of multilevel transformation towards advanced service provision in manufacturing firms.   Based on extensive qualitative studies with 13 leading Swedish manufacturing firms engaged in servitization, this dissertation provides a framework that shows how manufacturing firms experience ambivalence (i.e. the simultaneous pull in opposite directions) during transformation and how this affects the firm at the strategic, operational, and individual levels. The dissertation provides specific insights of how individual actions enable capability building for advanced services and how capabilities for advanced services help address business model alignment problems, thereby supporting transformation towards advanced service provision. This dissertation extends our understanding of how various aspects at multiple levels within a manufacturing firm are linked during the transformation towards advanced service provision. It marks one of the initial attempts in the servitization research to provide a multilevel explanation of firms’ overall transformation from providers of products to providers of advanced services.   This dissertation also uses the lens of ambivalence to provide insights into co-existing product and service orientations and their consequences during servitization. Ambivalence theories have been associated with individuals and have been applied in the sociopsychology literature. This dissertation extends these theories to the organizational context and the servitization literature. It also identifies specific capabilities that can help manufacturing firms in their transformation towards advanced services. Specifically, it redefines digitalization capability and shows how this capability is one of the most important capabilities that manufacturing firms must develop to transform into advanced service providers. This dissertation also provides a capability maturity model that can help guide the capability development process in manufacturing firms. Finally, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the role of individuals in the transformation process within firms. This is one of the first systematic attempts to provide a microfoundation-based view of individual-level influences on higher-level outcomes in the servitization literature.

Manufacturers dealing with complex products or systems are widely dependent on new technologies which can be utilized to create new business models. Servitization literature express an increased demand for advanced service offerings for manufacturers where revenues are generated by the performance and availability of their product. This stream of literature agree that maintenance organisations hold an important part of capturing the advantages of advanced servitization business models but that manufacturers often struggle with the deployment of digital technologies. Furthermore, studies within servitization imply that digital implementations and information management create value for manufactures, but a gap exists regarding how value is created. This study therefore explores and furthermore identifies the role of digitalized product information in maintenance services and how it creates value. The aim is to contribute with new insights regarding the realisation of advanced services within the service operations area. The research design is a multiple embedded case study including 10 interviews and a cost analysis. Technicians and maintenance managers are interviewed within companies who are i) manufacturers of complex products or systems and ii) have their own maintenance organisation. Two themes, “Convenience” and “Sustainability” were derived from the interviews to describe how value is created by the usage of DPI. Value is created by simplified processes, optimized time management, reduced consumption, optimized life-expectancy etc. through the usage of DPI in maintenance services of complex products or systems. Economic value in terms of cost reductions, sales optimizations and economic stability could be identified as holistic value created for the organizations, enabled by the two main themes. The results of the study indicate overlapping similarities with the existing literatures and address important aspects of how to realise the benefits of advanced services for manufacturers and what digital capabilities related to maintenance that can be utilized to successfully implement such services. / Tillverkande företag som hanterar komplexa produkter eller system är starkt beroende av ny teknologi som kan utnyttjas för att skapa nya affärsmodeller. Forskning inom tjänstefiering visar en ökad efterfrågan av avancerade tjänsteerbjudanden för tillverkande företag där intäkter genereras av produkternas prestanda och tillgänglighet. Dessa forskare är eniga om att underhållsorganisationer spelar en viktig roll för att fånga fördelarna med dessa avancerade tjänsteerbjudanden men att tillverkande företag ofta har svårigheter med att implementera digital teknik. Studier inom tjänstefiering påvisar att digitala implementationer och informationshantering skapar värde för tillverkande företag, men att ett forskningsgap som beskriver hur detta värde skapas existerar. Denna studie syftar därför till att utforska och identifiera rollen av digitaliserad produktinformation i underhållstjänster och hur det skapar värde. Målet med studien är att bidra med nya insikter angående förverkligandet av avancerade tjänsteerbjudanden inom litteratur för tjänstefiering. Studien är utformad som en multipel fallstudie som inkluderar 10 intervjuer och en kostnadsanalys. Tekniker och underhållschefer är intervjuade inom företag som är i) tillverkare av komplexa produkter eller system och ii) har en egen underhållsorganisation. Två teman, ”Bekvämlighet” och ”Hållbarhet”, härleddes från intervjuerna för att beskriva hur värde skapas genom användandet av DPI. Värde skapas genom förenklade processer, optimerad tidsåtgång, minimerad konsumtion, optimerad livslängd hos produkter osv. genom användningen av DPI i underhållstjänster av komplexa produkter eller system. Ekonomiskt värde i form av kostnadsreduceringar och optimerad försäljning kunde identifieras som holistiskt värde skapat för organisationerna, realiserat av resultatets två huvudteman. Studiens resultat indikerar överlappande likheter med existerande forskning och adresserar viktiga aspekter angående hur avancerade tjänsteerbjudanden förverkligas och vilka digitala förmågor relaterat till underhåll som kan utnyttjas för att på bästa sätt implementera sådana tjänster.

Purpose - The purpose of the thesis is to attend to apparent knowledge gaps in digital servitization andecosystem orchestration literature concerning: (1) understanding of the internal role distribution when orchestrating ecosystems in digital servitization; (2) need for increased knowledge on the capabilities required for ecosystem orchestration. To fulfill this purpose, the following objective was derived: how procurement can develop dynamic capabilities to orchestrate ecosystem-organization collaboration in digital servitization. Method - This thesis is built on a qualitative methodology using an inductive approach. Utilizing multi-actorperspectives on a single case study on a leading global manufacturing firm within the vehicle and transport industry. The studied procurement function within the case firm is currently in an early phase of building ecosystem collaborations to support the firm's overall digitalization and servitization journey. More than 40 interviews were conducted spanning across: various roles within the procurement function, various roles across other functions within the case firm tied to the procurement function, as well as other external actor's viewpoints. The interviews were analyzed through a thematic analysis approach. Findings - By building on the well-established dynamic capabilities perspective as a theoretical lens, the findings of this thesis reveal nine sets of capabilities within the respective clusters sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. In addition, four groups of underlying preconditions, referred to as enablers, were identified. We combine these insights into a framework underscoring the need for both capability development but also supporting enablers for successful development and utilization of said capabilities. The framework thus summarizes our key findings whilst illustrating interdependencies between the identified capabilities and enablers, showcasing that procurement must both develop routines and leverage the enablers, to successfully transition into a role in which they orchestrate ecosystem-organization collaboration. Implications - Through empirically explicating key capabilities, enablers and their interdependence, our thesis provides broad implications for management and strategy research relating to dynamic capabilities for orchestrating ecosystems in digital servitization. Furthermore, we also contribute to the scarce literature on procurement tied to these research streams. Additionally, our findings carry implications for procurement managers guiding them in how to strategically adjust to the continuously transformative industry landscape shaped by the trends digitalization, servitization and their interplay. This through rethinking the role of procurement as an orchestrator for innovation and value co-creation within the organization as well asassociated ecosystems, as well as paving the path for transitioning into such a role. Limitations and future research - This thesis is generally bound to a single case study within a set industry segment, at an early phase of rethinking procurement and ecosystem collaborations. Further research is suggested to validate our findings through larger datasets, other study methodologies and expand into other contexts. For instance, focusing on cross-industry comparisons or analyzing procurement's role and capability needs depending on the different stages of ecosystem evolution. To drive a truly dynamic firm, we further suggest investigating what role different internal functions (e.g., sales, engineering, IT) with benefit can undertake in the ecosystem depending on varying ecosystem actors, structure and maturity.