Greening as a competitiveness optimizer of servitization

Abstract

Servitizing firms are increasingly pressured by internal, political and market forces to adopt a parallel green strategy in the hopes of optimizing their competitive response to evolving market demands. But servitization and greening potentially represent divergent shifts in companies' operations and product/service offerings. This study aims to determine whether firms should implement a green investment strategy when already pursuing a complex strategic path of servitization. The study uses the non-parametric ‘benefit-of-the-doubt’ method to compare the competitive efficiency of firms implementing servitized versus non-servitized strategies, and between firms with and without green investment strategies. The study finds that firms pursuing both servitization and a green strategy had higher levels of competitive efficiency compared to those pursuing only one strategy or none at all. The results suggest that the combination of these two strategies generates competitive synergies that optimize overall competitive performance, contradicting the theoretical principles of the resource-based view and complexity perspectives. This result was found to be consistent throughout all analyzed OECD countries.