Perceived cultural enablers and inhibitors of the organizational transformation towards PSS

摘要

The servitization of production towards product-service systems (PSS) is a challenging transformative endeavor. It demands a shift of deeply rooted manifestations like shared assumptions, values and beliefs framing the understanding about and performing of core tasks of value creation. Whilst the existing body of research agrees on the pivotal factor of these deeply manifested elements of organizational culture, we argue that there is still little research elucidating actors’ perceptions of the role of culture in servitizing organizations. This paper aims to address this research gap by introducing an explorative cultural analysis at the company Ericsson. The main objective is to retrieve and further specify cultural facets and their potential role as enablers and inhibitors of servitization as perceived by actors. The key results of the study provide an advanced understanding of organizational culture as a critical factor within servitization of production. On the one hand, the results reveal that perceived separation-oriented values and beliefs emerge as specific cultural facets which enforce the exploitation of established product-oriented and service-oriented routines and practices. On the other hand, perceived facets of integration-oriented values and beliefs underpin the mutually organized processes of value co-creation. Based on these results, the authors finally argue that the integration- and separation-oriented values and beliefs of organizational culture make up a specific field of opposing forces within the servitizing organization of Ericsson. In order to make progress in servitization we argue that one approach of addressing or managing this specific field of opposing demands might be the nurturing of path-breaking initiatives.