Abstract

WEEKS, R. The culture and skills challenges associated with servitization: a South African perspective. JCMAN [online]. 2010, vol.7, n.1, pp.110-128. ISSN 1815-7440.

The boundaries between the manufacturing of products and the provision of service are increasingly breaking down and becoming blurred as institutions implement servitization strategies. It is suggested that there are, however, two very pertinent hurdles that need to be overcome in implementing such a strategy, namely culture transformation and the development of a new set of skills required for dealing with service provision. These challenges confronting management were analysed on the basis of a multidisciplinary literature research and the findings emanating from the study are briefly dealt with in this paper. A particularly important finding relates to the fact that in addition to manufacturing technological skills, a far wider range of multidisciplinary skills are required and these within a South African context are not always readily available. In addition it was found that traditional management paradigms of culture transformation may not be all that effect in dealing with a very complex servitization contextual setting. These findings and the insights gained from the research study could be of value to executives and managers of South African manufacturing institutions who are considering implementing a servitization strategy.

Keywords : Servitization; services economy; services science; organisational culture; T-shaped people skills; complexity theory.

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