Employee motivation in product-service system providers

Abstract

This research investigates how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors contribute to employee motivation in providers of Product-Service Systems (PSS). Employee motivation determines the quality of the delivered service and is thus an area of great importance for PSS providers. We present rich case-based data collected through semi-structured interviews, a survey and secondary sources. The analysis showed the particularly high importance of intrinsic and individual motivation factors such as the fulfilling nature of the work and skill development showing the ownership and pride service employees took in their work. Further, the organisation needs to set the context of high employee motivation by enabling flexibility and performance feedback. Our research contributes to the literature by providing a first empirical study of employee motivation in PSS providers and thus providing important insights on the implementation of a servitisation strategy.

The Role of Human Resource Management (HRM) for the Implementation of Sustainable Product-Service Systems (PSS)—An Analysis of Fashion Retailers

“…To be involved in the decision making of the organization provides them with the ability to influence their working conditions and directly contribute to their firm's success. It furthermore indicates being significant to others and implies an experience of trust and recognition for the work performed [118,179,196]. This makes employees develop a feeling of connectedness and solidarity with their employer.…”

“…This embraces the entire spectrum of creative, technical and business functions along the fashion value chain [150]. However, while in the traditional fashion manufacturing business, employees mostly carry out routine tasks within a specialized field of work; PSS implementation requires firms to incorporate more flexible approaches and fundamental different procedures [118,151]. Employees need to manage new value propositions, delivery channels, revenue streams, and ways of customer interaction and cooperation in both the upstream and the downstream value chain [16,36,66,[152][153][154].…”

“…Employees that are intrinsically motivated appreciate the work and their work environment itself [179]. The intrinsic motivation of employees has been recognized as a critical determinant for PSS implementation [118] since employee behavior directly influences customers satisfaction due to the permeable boundaries of service-focused organizations [116,185,186].…”

“…Organizations with a greater service orientation have preamble boundaries between themselves and their customers since employees and customers closely interact [116]. Organizational culture and employee experience is, therefore, directly transmitted to the customer, which makes it essential to avoid internal conflicts and create a common mindset [38,[117][118][119]. However, PSS literature on HRM is so far mainly limited to simply acknowledging the role of HRM for PSS success, but misses to present empirical evidence or deeper theoretical elaboration on this issue.…”

Pattern of the rational worker incentive system

“…Incentive system, which works effectively in one organization, may not be so effective for another one [1,2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]19]. And no matter what justifications analysis of the reasons of this situation gives, for the enterprise it is important to obtain significant results for the current / planned time period [3,12,17,22]. It is therefore particularly important that the RIS could be adapted to the maximum number of companies, despite the variety of activities.…”