Interaction orientation, strategic flexibility and service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises

Feng Wenna, Liu Ruyue

Science Research Management ›› 2021, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3) : 80-89.

Science Research Management ›› 2021, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3) : 80-89.

Interaction orientation, strategic flexibility and service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises

  • Feng Wenna, Liu Ruyue
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Abstract

    Under the pressure of demand upgrading, competition increasing and the increase of production cost, manufacturing enterprises begin to explore a new development path, which is creating value through the collaboration with users. Manufacturing enterprises provide effective services to users by absorbing and using the users′ knowledge and information. In order to explain the processing logic of user-driven manufacturing enterprise service innovation from the perspective of resource and capability, the paper uses the dynamic resource-based view and value co-creation theory to analyze the influence of interaction orientation and strategic flexibility on service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises. An empirical analysis was conducted on the survey data of 319 sample companies by using software of Amos 24.0. The research finds that: (1) strategic flexibility plays a partial intermediary role between interactive response capability, customer empowerment, customer value management, and service innovation performance, however, the intermediary effect between customer concept and service innovation performance is not significant. (2) Under the condition of after-sales service providing, the mediation effect of resource flexibility is higher than coordination flexibility on interaction orientation and service innovation performance. On the contrary, under the condition of value-added service, the mediation role of coordination flexibility is more significant than resource flexibility. Therefore, the manufacturing enterprises should open the boundary and introduce the user to participate in the process of new services co-creation. Actually, the category of new service which the enterprise could provide should rely on the evolution level of resource flexibility and coordination flexibility. 
    These show that: Firstly, interaction response capability, customer empowerment and customer value management of an enterprise can effectively promote the strategic flexibility, so as to improve the user-oriented service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises, and to promote the service-oriented upgrading of manufacturing enterprise. When measuring the interaction orientation in multi-dimensions, the paper finds that user empowerment, classifying users, and responding to individual service demand effectively promote strategic flexibility and successfully achieve higher service innovation performance. On the one hand, the paper confirms the frequency and degree of interaction between enterprises and users determines the differentiation level of services which provided by enterprises to meet the users′ need in the process of value co-creating, on the other hand, which determines the market development and user habits cultivation. These conclusions are quite different from the research of He Yiqing. The continuous user-oriented resource and capability reconstruction are pushed by the responding to the users′ demand information, so the resources and capabilities of manufacturing enterprise are highly flexible if its operation is user-orientated. Similar to the research of Feng Yongchun et al., the paper also finds that manufacturing enterprises need to reconfigure their resources and capabilities in the process of service solutions providing. Therefore, reconfiguring the resource chain align with the users′ need, rationally integrating and configuring flexible resources to give a quick responding for the service demand, which is the processing logic of manufacturing enterprise service innovation.
    Secondly, the results show that new services provided by enterprises need to match the resource flexibility and capability flexibility. With the improvement of corporate strategic flexibility, manufacturing enterprises can gradually respond to the users′ personalized service needs in a timely manner. The strategic arrangements of manufacturing enterprise which is aligned with the interaction orientation allow to encourage users to participate in service innovation and allows to categorize users based on their valuable contribution. In the after-sales service phase, the goal of manufacturing enterprise service innovation is to "grasping the important and letting the unimportant go", which means to meet the different service demands of high-value users by building modular resource coordination mechanical to provide modularly services. At the same time, the provision of full-lifecycle services by manufacturing enterprise makes the conversion cost greatly increased, then the aim of locking users is realized. In the value-added service phase, the flexibility of enterprise resources and capabilities is sufficient to meet the personalized service needs of users. At this time, the goal of service innovation is "tailor-made". Encouraging the user to deeply participate and finding the potential service needs could improve the quality and speed of resource coordination and integration. The subject of new services meet is changing from a focus on the high-value users to the individuals under the long-tail effect. Therefore, the needs of service innovation should change from modular to personalized. In the value-added service phase, the requirement of service innovation is not only to respond to the needs of users but also to stimulate user demand. The legalization process of upgrading enterprises will be accelerated by providing new services to obtain market recognition.
    Finally, User-oriented service innovation in manufacturing enterprises needs to touch the users at the near distance all the time. The enterprise should build a closed-loop system to catch user demand and provide service, which needs the enterprise breaks boundary to guide users to participate in service innovation. User participation changes not only the mode of enterprise service creation, but also the direction of enterprise resources and capabilities evolution. Manufacturing enterprises need to keep an open attitude and build an open process, which allows the interaction with users to occur timely. Through these efforts, a win-win embedded relationship could be formed, which is beneficial for the value co-creation, and which will push the user to play a positive role in the service innovation. Service innovation relies on the flexibility of enterprise resources and capabilities, so the content of service innovation should be consistent with the development of enterprise resources and capabilities. However, the evolution of strategic flexibility always encounters obstacles. On the one hand, the resistance comes from the organizational turbulence brought by the reconstruction of the system and structure, on the other hand, it comes from the transformation of people′s thinking. Therefore, overcoming the strategic rigidity is the basis of servitization transformation and service innovation performance. As we all know, the starting point of the resources and capabilities evolution of each enterprise is different, and the speed of evolution is also different. In a word, the service-oriented upgrading of manufacturing enterprise needs time and space, we can′t expect every enterprise has the same personalized service response ability at the same time.

Key words

interaction orientation / value co-creation / service innovation performance / strategic flexibility / dynamic resource-based view


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Feng Wenna, Liu Ruyue. Interaction orientation, strategic flexibility and service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises[J]. Science Research Management. 2021, 42(3): 80-89

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