Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation (Jan 2024)
Digital servitization and leadership: A holistic view on required leadership traits and skills
Abstract
PURPOSE: Digitalization and servitization are two major developments significantly disrupting companies’ competitive landscape. The research area that combines both aspects, digital servitization, poses substantial opportunities and challenges for companies to navigate. It requires guidance from leadership to succeed and innovate, but current scientific research lacks a holistic view on leadership for digital servitization so far. METHODOLOGY: We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with leaders active in digital servitization initiatives, holding positions ranging from first-level managers to vice presidents and executives. Eighteen have more than ten years of leadership experience. Through inductive coding, we derived 43 codes within a qualitative analysis. We applied thematic analysis to structure our findings, resulting in a thematic map of leadership skills for digital servitization based on the research participants’ insights. FINDINGS: Our findings present a holistic view of leadership skills for digital servitization. Leaders need to consider the perspectives of strategic business and people leadership. Digital servitization requires leaders to engage in a wide range of activities. From a strategic business leadership perspective, this ranges from evolving goal setting, a comprehensive business understanding, the ability to find the right team composition, and understanding customer and market needs. The people leadership perspective requires leaders to create and communicate a vision for digital servitization and manage change and employees’ fears while enabling and empowering employees. Furthermore, we identified that digital servitization requires a balanced level of cognitive, interpersonal, business, and strategic leadership requirements. IMPLICATIONS: We contribute to scientific research by providing a comprehensive definition of digital servitization and summarizing existing research focusing on leadership aspects of digital servitization. Our findings offer actionable insights for practitioners by approaching with a holistic view on digital servitization and considering strategic business and people leadership aspects. Applying our outlined themes will support leaders in improving the conditions and possibilities to successfully trigger and implement digital servitization activities within their companies. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: Our research combines isolated leadership aspects for digital servitization and underlines the complexity of digital servitization, emphasizing the need for a holistic view. Outlining the element of balancing business and people skills provides novel insights on advancing digital servitization into the research domain, which is dominated by technical-oriented research.
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