Manufacturing firms seeking to create and extend competitive advantage are striving to include more services into their offerings. Meanwhile, there are research gaps such as how frontline service providers influence organizational dynamic capabilities and how organizational dynamic capabilities can be developed in servitization need to be systematically studied and explicitly explained. Although service is characterized by service providers applying own knowledge and skills for the benefits of customers, service providers are traditionally looked as pure decision takers. The influence of service providers upon organizational dynamic capabilities is habitually underestimated. Because solution is classified as the most common offering in servitization and project-based integrated solution is an essential category in solution the study launched in this thesis focuses on firms providing project-based integrated water treatment solutions. The attempt to fill identified research gaps is carried out in three steps by answering hereinafter questions: What roles the frontline service providers, project manager and team members, play in project-based integrated solution? How service providers can influence organizational dynamic capabilities in project-based integrated solution? What mechanisms service providers can leverage to develop dynamic capabilities in project-based integrated solution? This thesis builds on the intersection of dynamic capability and servitization literatures and is complemented by insights from project-based organization researches. Knowledge about the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities in project-based integrated solution is generated from literature review. Data on potential strategic roles of service providers, their influence on organizational capabilities, and mechanisms to develop capabilities are collected in semi-structured interviews. In this thesis, the strategic roles which project manager and team members play, and their respective influences upon organizational capabilities are differentiated. Meanwhile, data in relation with the service cocreators on customer side are also collected and analysed, and their influence on project performance is discussed. Overall, this study is qualitative in nature and the theory development follows a deductive in combination with inductive approach. This study generates at least four theoretical contributions: firstly, it classifies the roles frontline service providers could play; secondly, it deepens the understanding of the influence frontline service providers could have on organizational capabilities; thirdly, it explores the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities in servitization; and fourthly, it provides preliminary findings about the influence of service co-creators. This study also brings multiple managerial contributions for example providing insights for managers to reconsider firm organizational structure, decision-making processes, human resource and knowledge assets management in servitization. Additionally, this study suggests that there are applicable mechanisms for firms to develop capabilities in project-based integrated solution. Finally, this study emphasizes that, to improve project performance, managers should also put more efforts on developing service cocreators’ capabilities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-160755 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Shao, Hong Xiang |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds