Sven M. Laudien

Service-dominant logic and the business model concept: toward a conceptual integration

Companies are recently affected by an ongoing change of customer behaviour. Customers are no longer solely interested in product offerings but call for a provision of service solutions that accompany these offerings. This development forces companies to rethink their basic business logic by paying more attention to the crucial service aspect. This change goes along with a need for companies to redefine their idea of how to create and capture value. Against this background, we ask: how does an increased focus on service influence a companys business model? We examine this question based on the service-dominant logic concept as well as the business model concept and discuss possibilities how to adapt the business model to a service-dominant business logic. As a result, we develop a set of propositions describing the influence of a companys service-dominant business logic on basic elements of a companys business model. Our research shows that a fundamental re-design of the business model is necessary to successfully implement service-dominant logic.

Overcoming Liabilities of Foreignness by Modes of Structural Coordination: Regional Headquarters and their Role in TNCs

In our chapter, we show how internationalisation-based performance outcomes can be amended by using a Regional Headquarters (RHQ) structure. We assume that ‘transnational corporations’ (TNCs) act restrained by a so-called GLOCAL dilemma caused by a coeval need for realising standardisation advantages and ‘location-specific advantages’ (LSA). Thereby, we believe that these opportunities are not necessarily linked to the same level of geographical aggregation. We further take into account that emerging ‘liabilities of foreignness’ (LOF) exert influence on the performance effect of cross-border transactions and highlight the important role information quality plays in this context. To back our general line of reasoning, we employ the information cost approach (Casson, 1998, 1999) as theoretical frame of our chapter. This approach enhances the common one-dimensional view on transactions costs (e.g. Williamson, 1985) by understanding these costs as two-dimensional phenomenon made up of ‘observation costs’ and ‘communication costs’. Additionally, the approach explicitly considers information quality, which is useful to our analysis. Against this background, we discuss how performance effects triggered by a use of RHQ evolve subject to basic types of organisational structures used by TNCs. We contribute to business research by providing a theoretically founded and widely new performance-based angle on the RHQ phenomenon. It combines different research streams that focus influences on cross-border business activities by relying on either the idea of LOF or the idea of LSA.

The Influence Of The Industrial Internet Of Things On Business Model Design: A Qualitative-Empirical Analysis

The Industrial Internet of Things is recently a widely discussed phenomenon. However, business level effects of this phenomenon are by now underresearched. We tackle this research gap by presenting an in-depth analysis of business model changes manufacturing firms employ to adequately react to this technological development. Against the background of a multiple-case study we identify and characterise three archetypes of business models manufacturing firm implement in order to benefit from opportunities provided by the Industrial Internet of Things. Furthermore, we present insights on how firms innovate their extant business model in this context. Thereby, our study considerably contributes to business model research and additionally bolsters up a strategic firm level perspective on the Industrial Internet of Things.

The broken product chain: rapid paths of service internationalization in terms of the service-dominant logic

How does an increased importance of services influence the time pattern of launching industrial services and integrated solutions in foreign markets? When examining this question, we explain the change by making reference to the concept of service-dominant logic that suggests a move from goods-centred to service-centred value creation. The change that has occurred in the last few decades requires new value architectures, new competences and, in the case of internationalization, new organizational trajectories. The new constellation often implies an instant internationalization right from the outset, which is considered in a newly developed model. By this new line of reasoning, we employ an evolutionary approach that is based on a competence-based perspective and research on path dependence.

Integrated Value Configurations in the Sharing Economy

Sharing has become a new trend in business that heavily affects the ways how firms do business. Despite this important development, research by now only provides rudimentary insights into value configuration mechanisms applied in the sharing economy. Our paper that is inspired by extant research on value creation configurations as well as recent business model research develops a model of an integrated value network for the sharing economy. We explain that focal firms in sharing economy networks ground their business model configuration in the application of web-based technology. We further point to two dimensions that determine the positioning of the business model: the degree of individualization vs. standardization of the content and the degree of completeness of property rights.

On the sluggish adoption of total cost of ownership business models - A SDL perspective

It is rather undisputed that in recent times the economy is to a large extent a service - and maybe even more - a knowledge driven one. The service-dominant logic concept points to the pervasive service nature of business concepts and transactions and their dominance. This would suggest a high level of openness to innovative service solutions in general. The authors focus on the ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ concept, the obstacles from the customer’s point of view and the long and uncertain way of final adoption. The paper advances research in three ways: First, the authors connect the phenomenon of a sluggish adoption of innovative hybrid business models with servicedominant logic reasoning. Service-dominant logic thinking opens the door for a better understanding of imperfectly designed business models. Second, they shed additional light on organizational purchasing decisions in the context of cognitive biases. Third, they give empirical evidence to support their viewpoint.

Komplexitätsbeherrschung als Herausforderung der Produktivitätssteigerung international agierender Dienstleistungsunternehmen: Die Rolle von Zwischeneinheiten als Instrument struktureller Koordination

Um die Rolle von Zwischeneinheiten als strukturelles Koordinationsinstrument in international agierenden Dienstleistungsunternehmen adaquat beleuchten zu konnen, ist zunachst allgemein auf Rahmenbedingungen internationaler Geschaftstatigkeit im Kontext wertschopfungsbezogener Besonderheiten von Dienstleistungen einzugehen. Ferner verlangt das Spannungsfeld zwischen Standardisierung und Differenzierung, in dem sich internationale Dienstleistungsunternehmen bewegen, Beachtung. Im Anschluss an die Diskussion dieser grundlegenden Rahmenbedingungen erscheint es angebracht, Zielsetzung und Aufbau des Beitrages kurz explizit zu spezifizieren.

On the Need of SME Organizational Adaption to the International Business Environment: A Competence-Based Perspective

In our paper we challenge the common notion that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have to adapt to the international business environment to be successful when acting in an international context. Although we believe in a need for certain adaption, we claim that the possibility that SME are to a certain extent able to proactively shape outer conditions is not adequately considered in literature. Therefore we ask how far SMEs in international business need to adapt to the environment to ensure a state of international competitiveness. We understand SMEs as open systems (Sanchez and Heene, 1996) and employ the Competence-based Theory of the Firm (CbTF) (Foss and Ishikawa, 2007; Freiling et al., 2008) as theoretical frame of reference for our conceptual paper. Thanks to its moderate voluntaristic nature, this theory allows considering both social embeddedness and managerial discretion of firms. Besides, this perspective takes into account internal developments as well as developments in the business environment. This is particularly useful to understand interaction processes with the environment that aim at accessing so-called ‘firm-addressable assets’. Firm-addressable assets explain the resource dependence of international SMEs on third-parties. However, backed by ‘absorptive capacity’ (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), firm-addressable assets fuel internal processes of learning as well as resource and competence building. Moreover, CbTF allows for considering the role of certain categories of resources. Following service-dominant logic (SDL) (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), the distinction between ‘operand resources’ and ‘operant resources’ becomes a centerpiece of our argument: SMEs need to adapt to the environment due to resource constraints by operand resources and shape the environment primarily driven by operant resources. Our paper advances research in three ways: (1) we reinforce the concept of moderate voluntarism in this stream of research and challenge the predominantly deterministic view on SME environmental adaption; (2) we introduce a rather new theory (CbTF) and develop an understanding that features the managerial discretion of SME’s in international competition; (3) we depart from the quite unspecific notion that intangibles matter in case of proactive SME management and specify the resource categories in this realm with more explanatory power in this regard.

Service Innovation: Obstacles to Implementing the Total Cost of Ownership Concept

Firms recently face considerable challenges caused by a rather pervasive trend of globalizing economic transactions. Confronted with this challenge, firms are forced to develop and sustain competitive advantages in particular by proactive moves of service innovations to secure their market survival. Against this background, we focus a particular kind of innovative service concepts: the total cost of ownership (TCO) approach in business-to-business settings. Due to complexity and newness of our research topic, we employ a primarily conceptual procedure to analyze how the market-driven necessity to offer complex and extensive, customized service solutions forces firms to develop unique service capabilities like TCO to enrich and ‘hybridize’ their product portfolio. Our paper advances to business research in three main ways: first we highlight, building on competence-based thinking and service-dominant logic (SDL), the challenge of firms to implement innovative blends of products and services – an aspect that is still rather understated in literature. Second, we analyze consequences of demand-side cognitive biases on complex buying-decisions. Third, we provide evidence that these demand-side biases are relevant to decision-making and therefore should be considered by suppliers in designing their offerings.

Uncovering the Nature of Platform-based Business Models: An Empirical Taxonomy

Digital platforms increasingly determine the 21 century business world. This is especially reflected in the development of multi-sided platforms such as Airbnb or Uber that depict the centerpiece of innovative business models as they effectively match demand-side and supply-side participants through advanced technologies. Such marketplace platforms substantially contribute to an emergence of new ecosystems. However, we do by now not know much about the characteristics of the underlying innovative business models. To close the gap, this research develops a conceptually and empirically grounded taxonomy of marketplace business models. The paper is based on a dataset of 100 marketplace firms and presents an analysis of the business models of these firms based on different cluster analysis techniques. As a result, basic types of marketplace business models are identified and characterized. The paper contributes to a better understanding of platformbased business models and opens several avenues for studying their interplay with ecosystems.