A servitização sob a perspectiva das capacidades dinâmicas

Abstract

The search for implementing servitization, which has currently been discussed in organizational as well as in academic domains, demands internal and external efforts from the organizations. As a significant part of the changes required by an organization that wishes to implement servitization occurs in its internal processes, the study of capabilities (competences) have become of great importance, seeking to understand what must be adapted and/or developed to implement this new practice. However, little is known about the required capabilities to deal with this new business model and how they modify themselves. The objective of this study is to identify and characterize the dynamic and operational capabilities necessary to the practice of servitization in organizations. Therefore, dynamic and operational capabilities were identified in the literature by means of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), which returned 26 papers and pointed out 5 dynamic capabilities and 13 operational capabilities. These results confirmed the gap that exists in the literature regarding this topic, and served as constructs to conduct the case study interviews. The research method used was the study of multiple cases in organizations of different sectors that have already experienced servitization. The data analysis was performed using the Content Analysis (CA) technique. As main results, the presence of some capabilities pointed out in the literature was confirmed in the companies studied. These include the ability to learn new competencies/functions, the ability to establish partnerships with suppliers (third parties), the ability to flexibilize negotiations and contracts, the ability to assess the environment and risks, the ability to develop new products and services, the ability to customize or adapt the product, the ability to listen to customers' opinion and to identify customer needs, the capability to change and the ability technical training for employees and third parties. Some new capabilities were identified during the field research: the capability to perform maintenance and the capability to develop a service-oriented mentality. Thus, the research has brought empirical evidence of the presence of certain dynamic and operational capabilities in companies that perform the servitization, revealed the presence of other capabilities not directly mentioned in the literature and allowed to detail some of the capabilities (mainly operational) discussed in the theory. It made possible to identify practices and guidelines that foster the deployment of the capabilities needed for the servitization. Moreover, an additional analysis aimed at identifying relationships among the referred capabilities and the type of PSS that the organization wants to deploy, such as PSS oriented to the result, oriented to the use and basic services.