The impact of service-oriented organizational design factors on firm performance: The moderating role of service-oriented corporate culture

While manufacturing firms increasingly adopt servitization, with which they shift the basis of their competitive edge from the product-based mode to the service-based mode, they have to find approaches to implement servitization successfully. An initial attempt to achieve this is to make proper internal organizational changes towards service orientation. However, how do these changes affect firm performance has not been inquired adequately. In addition, limited studies have integrated cultural factors into the relationship between internal changes and firm performance. Focusing on two organizational design (OD) factors, i.e., service-oriented organizational structure (SOOS) and service-oriented human resource management (SOHR), and the cultural factor of service-oriented corporate culture (SOCC), we draw on resource-based theory (RBT) and structural contingency theory (SCT) to conceptualize SOOS, SOHR, and SOCC as tangible organizational, tangible intellectual, and intangible organizational resources, respectively, with a view to ascertaining the direct impacts of SOOS and SOHR on firm performance, as well as the moderating role of SOCC. Based on analysis of data collected from 207 Chinese manufacturing firms, we find that SOOS and SOHR impact firm performance differently, while SOCC differentially moderates the effects of the two OD factors on firm performance. Our findings provide an alternative theoretical lens by combining RBT and SCT to account for the success of firms’ servitization transformation.