As an increasing number of companies operates in international markets characterized by global competition, many traditional manufacturers augment their product offerings with services to gain competitive advantage. As servitization needs change throughout the company, many companies struggle on the transition from a product – to a service centric business model. The dynamic capabilities view analyses capabilities in changing environments and could therefore be an interesting theoretical lens for servitization research. Building on existing case research of dynamic capabilities in a servitization context, we analyze the impact of dynamic capabilities and especially of sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities on firm performance in a servitization context. Additionally, we analyze the moderating role of environmental turbulence. The results, which are based on 206 manufacturing companies, show that dynamic capabilities are an essential factor for the performance of a firm in the context of servitization. We find a significant impact of sensing and reconfiguration on firm performance, whereas seizing has no significant impact. We fail to confirm a significant moderating impact of environmental turbulence, which indicates that dynamic capabilities are important in a servitization context indifferent of environmental turbulence. However, we find indication that reconfiguration is more important in relatively stable contexts, whereas sensing is more important in turbulent environments. We contribute to the literature on servitization and dynamic capabilities by creating evidence that dynamic capabilities have an impact on firm performance in a servitization context. This has practical implications as well: Managers in servitizing companies should assess their dynamic capabilities and should especially focus on reconfiguration in relatively stable environments and on sensing on turbulent environments.
The transfer of a business to the next generation is a very important issue entailing several different social and economic influences. Failed business successions cause a loss of jobs, company knowledge and innovation potential. Creating an environment where business transfer is supported should therefore be of major importance for company owners and for policy makers. For better succession planning it is important to know the obstacles and challenges associated with business succession. Especially Eastern European countries face many challenges as these countries have no experience in business succession. To analyze the obstacles and challenges of business succession in Central Europe, three Eastern countries (CZ, SK and PL) with no experience in business succession were analyzed and compared to Austria where half of family businesses are at least in their second generation. Literature analysis and two focus groups with stakeholders (local public authorities and private entrepreneurs) were undertaken in all four countries. The results show that one of the main obstacles and challenges for business succession is the absence of a successor. Especially in Austria, this is recognized as the main obstacle. The Eastern countries (CZ, SK and PL) face different challenges to Austria that can mainly be explained by the lack of experience and supporting schemes for business succession. Especially knowledge and awareness related obstacles play an important role in Eastern European countries. Business succession is an individual process involving many emotions; therefore psychological and social issues are perceived as a huge obstacle in each analyzed country. Austria has a lot of experience with successful business transfers and offers various support mechanisms. However, many similar problems to Eastern countries were detected. A change of the business succession environment and the raising of awareness of the topic is therefore necessary in all investigated countries.
Globalization, rapid technological changes and labor market developments cause that companies require different skilled employees on a continuous basis. This leads to a shortage in skilled workers in Upper Austria. In order to overcome this issue Upper Austrian regions try to attract skilled workers from abroad or people who left the region and moved to another place in Austria. In order to foster this movement Austria introduced the Red-White-Red Card in 2011, which eases the access to the labor market for skilled workers from the non-EEA (European Economic Area). An empirical study conducted in 2016 and 2017 should support the companies in evaluating their level of attractiveness from the point of view of immigrants and remigrants and should give them advice on how to increase this level. The study is made up of an online questionnaire consisting of nine dimensions, which are called welcome_here, _administration, _job, _housing, _family, _education, _leisure time, _health and _infrastructure. In every dimension challenges for the companies, needs of the employees and possible actions and solutions taken are being evaluated. The questionnaire consists of a mix of closed, multiple choice and open questions. In 2016 and 2017 in total 41 companies and 39 municipalities filled in the questionnaire. This report deals with the results of the interviews conducted with the companies. In general, companies evaluated their level of competence higher than the need for action in each of the nine dimensions, except in welcome_infrastructure. The biggest challenges for immigrating skilled workers are mainly language barriers, integration and settlement of the family/partner. From the company side it becomes visible that employers do not perceive themselves responsible for some dimensions dealing with leisure time or the family.
Companies are either proactively driving the digital transformation or are forced to digitalize by markets and ecosystems. In order to identify the status about the digital transformation of sales in practice and to get deeper knowledge about treated areas in sales and challenges on the path of digitalization, in-depth interviews of sales executives and managers of more than 50 internationally operating companies in three countries Germany, Finland and Austria were conducted in this research. The results show that one major goal for companies is to accelerate digitizing processes as digitalization helps to work more efficiently. Access to systems is necessary, hence investments in digitalization are seen as sustainable and absolutely essential for to serve B2B customers today. Digital tools lead to adaptions in the sales process as with support sales processes and sales management. Accelerated also by the COVID-19 crisis, face-to-face customer visits have been reduced even more and online meetings have increased as the speed of response has become more and more important. Finally, the necessary skill set of a sales force has to be adapted, which has to be further researched in the future, having support of higher education institutions being the order of the day. Companies have realized that a good sales pitch does not necessarily need to be in person, due to new virtual technologies.
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