Territorial servitization: Exploring the virtuous circle connecting knowledge-intensive services and new manufacturing businesses

By Esteban Lafuente, Y. Vaillant, Ferran Vendrell‐Herrero. 2017

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mainstream servitization literature mostly describes the success of manufacturing firms in integrating services for their corporate clients. However, the literature is relatively silent on how territories capitalize on the potential interconnectedness between manufacturing firms and the knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sector. The analysis of the outcomes that result from the mutually dependent associations between manufacturing businesses and KIBS firms, a process that we call Territorial servitization, is of great relevance for academics and policy makers. This research hypothesizes that there is a positive symbiotic and bidirectional link between the growth in KIBS activity and employment generation by manufacturing sector start-ups. Furthermore, we scrutinize the mediating role over this relation of relevant industry characteristics, in our case the stock of manufacturing firms and the total number of freights transported. The empirical application considers a unique dataset created from multiple sources—the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the Spanish Institute of Statistics and Eurostat—for the 17 Spanish regions during the period 2006–2012. The results support the view that territorial servitization contributes to employment creation in manufacturing sectors. Territories with a vigorous manufacturing base benefit from a virtuous circle in which KIBS start-ups and newly formed manufacturers are connected through the economic activity of incumbent manufacturing firms. The study offers valuable insights for scholars and policy makers on how to implement specific policies—e.g., the development of digital infrastructures—that facilitate the interaction between manufacturing and KIBS businesses, thus fuelling territorial development.

Subfields: Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d2ae494c3d46ee75ce14a3fa9d24bdb9922c1053

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

1. Ferran Vendrell‐Herrero
2. Esteban Lafuente
3. Oscar F. Bustinza
4. Y. Vaillant

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Ferran Vendrell‐Herrero
2. Esteban Lafuente
3. Oscar F. Bustinza
4. Y. Vaillant
5. Rolf Sternberg

Citations in the corpus

• Product-service innovation and performance: the role of collaborative partnerships and R&D intensity (2019, unknown): “Since high-R&D-intensity industries require a highly skilled employees policy makers may try to boost territorial servitization (Lafuente et al., 2016) through KIBS allocation incentives.”
• Make-or-buy configurational approaches in product-service ecosystems and performance (2019, background): “(Prahalad & Hamel, 1990; Lafuente et al., 2017), and create complementarities and synergies between KIBS and manufacturer resources to generate the coevolving”