Exploring the contribution of management innovation to the evolution of dynamic capabilities

Companies that find innovative ways to manage capabilities gain competitive advantages. The results of multiple case studies of capital goods manufacturing companies suggest that management innovation contributes to dynamic capabilities. The findings confirm the importance of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring as dynamic capabilities. Management innovation differs in terms of whether it contributes to sensing, seizing, or reconfiguring. The findings describe issues of management innovation, such as key change agents and utilization (motivation, invention, implementation, as well as theorizing and labeling), which facilitate sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. Maintaining capability-driven competitive advantages is not limited to the innovation of products and services, but should also address management innovation that drives dynamic capabilities. The present study relies on a novel conceptualization of dynamic capabilities through management innovation. This conceptualization advances theory-building on the issue of dynamic capabilities.     

中国制造企业服务市场细分的实证研究

随着中国经济的快速发展,中国制造产生了对机器设备需求的巨大市场,而服务业务的潜在发展空间促使设备供应商或专业服务提供商更加关注对服务业务的市场研究.本文针对中国机器及设备用户的服务需求情况进行了系统的中国制造企业服务市场细分的实证调查及研究.本文的调查采用用户访谈、座谈及大面积问卷发放的方式进行,数据分析上采用探索性因子分析和聚类分析,分析结果对中国制造企业的服务需求按其特征分为五类,比较突出的服务需求特点是表现出较强的价格敏感度.     

Service Business Development in Small- to Medium-Sized Equipment Manufacturers

Purpose: This article explores service business development by small- and medium-sized equipment manufacturers (SMEMs). It focuses on underlying dynamic and operational capabilities in service business development.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The research design is based on case study research with nine companies from Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Findings: The findings are twofold. First, the authors elaborate the phases and capabilities necessary for service business development. Second, they argue that these phases and capabilities depend on sales channels (direct sales versus indirect sales through distributors) and customer structures (a limited number of strategic customers versus many end-customers). SMEMs selling directly to a limited number of strategic customers develop organizational capabilities through four phases: (1) consolidation of service offerings, (2) job enlargements in organizational functions, (3) job enlargement in the key account teams, and (4) orchestration of partners to widen the solutions offered to customers. SMEMs selling indirectly through distributors to many customers develop organizational capabilities through the following four phases: (1) rearranging collaboration with distributors, (2) enlarging the service competencies of distributors, (3) modifying distributors into subsidiaries, and (4) enlarging jobs in the sales function of the subsidiaries.

Research Limitations/Implications: The research limitations are due mainly to the intrinsic nature of qualitative research.

Practical Implications: Managers can obtain guidance for service business development from the phases and capabilities described in the paper.

Originality/Value: The study offers a comprehensive framework for assisting researchers in conceptualizing service business development and operationalizing capabilities. The results provide testable propositions that can be used to guide future research.     

制造企业服务业务开发的战略安排研究

通过系统的理论分析和实证研究,对制造企业服务业务开发中的战略安排体系及其关键活动进行了确认,以期在实证分析层面上对制造企业服务管理理论体系进行丰富,并对制造企业服务管理实践提供一定的决策参考。研究结果表明：制造企业服务业务的开发应基于客户价值生成过程;业务开发组织应注意市场导向并应成立独立的服务部门;服务营销应从内部、外部及多层互动展开;服务开发战略的实施需改变传统以产品生产为主流的企业文化,创造产品与服务共生的文化氛围。     

Permanent and temporary workers in a matching framework

This paper investigates on a theoretical level the underlying causes of recent trends in decision of firms to hire temporary and permanent labour when workers and firms meet through a frictional directed search technology. Temporary workers differ from permanent workers in that they have a lower bargaining weight but look for a permanent job while on the temporary job. The findings are that permanent arrangements are more prevalent the more productive the aggregate production function is, i.e. also in the less productive phases. More efficient matching has an inverse U shaped impact, it first increases the prevalence of temporary arrangements and then decreases it. Bargaining weights have an ambiguous impact.     

Organisationale Fähigkeiten für Dienstleistungsstrategien

Kürzere Technologiezyklen, steigende Wettbewerbsintensit?t auf globalen M?rkten, erh?hter Druck auf Produktmargen und zunehmende Homogenisierung von Produkten führen viele Hersteller von Investitionsgütern zu einer strategischen Neuorientierung und dem Ausbau des Dienstleistungsgesch?fts. Für die erfolgreiche Positionierung als Entwicklungs-oder Outsourcingpartner ben?tigen Firmen jedoch bestimmte organisationale F?higkeiten.     

Competitive advantage through service differentiation by manufacturing companies

This paper examines the relationship among the complexity of customer needs, customer centricity, innovativeness, service differentiation, and business performance within the context of companies that have made a service transition from pure goods providers to service providers. A survey of 332 manufacturing companies provides the basis for the empirical investigation. One key finding is that a strong emphasis on service differentiation can lead to a manufacturing firm's strategies for customer centricity being less sensitive to increasingly complex customer needs, which can increase a firm's payoff for customer centricity. In contrast, the payoff from innovativeness appears to be higher if the firm focuses its resources on either product or service innovation; that is, a dual focus does not work well. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for researchers and managers.