Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT The implementation of servitization as a business strategy remains a significant challenge for firms seeking to offer integrated product‐service bundles. Despite the growing body of research in the servitization literature, an integrative framework for explaining the recurring failures in servitization efforts has yet to emerge. Through a qualitative meta‐analysis of empirical evidence documented in existing case studies, we develop a process theory that examines the tensions between product and service businesses during the service business development process. Our study identifies three common servitization failure modes, highlights the contributing factors across various stages of servitization, and establishes causal links between structural elements and behavioral outcomes to explain the heterogeneity in service business performance. By adopting a process perspective, we provide a more nuanced understanding of servitization dynamics, offering new insights that complement and extend established theories on firm growth and capability development. We conclude by discussing managerial implications for firms pursuing a servitization strategy and outlining future research steps to test and further refine the proposed theory.

RETRACTION: E.C. Falcone and J.W. Ridge , “,” Journal of Operations Management 70 , no. ( 2024 ): 600 – 629 , https://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1302 . The above article, published online on 27 March 2024 in Wiley Online Library ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ), and its correction ( https://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1350 ), have been retracted by agreement between the journal Editors‐in‐Chief, Elliot Bendoly and Rogelio Oliva; the Association for Supply Chain Management; and Wiley Periodicals LLC. A third party raised concerns with the editors regarding data irregularities throughout the article's text and tables. Following an investigation, the editors noted that the identified transcription errors significantly impacted the article's conclusions, and affected their confidence in the results reported. The authors provided raw data and analysis code for review, which allowed for identification of the transcription and methodological errors. However, the editors determined that the authors’ explanation and data was not sufficient to resolve the concerns, and therefore the article must be retracted.

ABSTRACT The increasing availability of secondary data on supply chain relationships has created new opportunities for empirical research in supply chain management. Datasets from sources including Bloomberg SPLC, FactSet, and CompuStat may support empirical analyses of decision‐making, strategic behaviors, governance mechanisms, and dynamics of inter‐organizational relationships of supply chains. However, the complexity and interconnectedness of supply chains and the inconsistent quality and coverage of supply chain data sources present empirical challenges, which have limited the scope and depth of current empirical research on supply chains. To address these challenges, this study investigates and compares the three commonly used supply chain databases and introduces a data‐focused roadmap for supply chain research using secondary data sources. This roadmap presents a process featuring data source selection, unit‐of‐analysis decisions, and appropriate econometric treatments, for example, endogeneity, selection bias, and correlated errors in supply chains, which contributes to the supply chain management literature by improving consistency, generalizability, and reliability in empirical supply chain research.