The impact of servitization on Competency Management

This study examines the impact of servitization on competency management. The study was carried out at a multinational company, which is market leader in industrial products. Objectives of the study is to find out new competencies that need to be developed or acquired due to the implementation of servitization strategy and to find out the challenges that manufacturing firms face in the re-alignment of employee competencies necessary for implementation of servitization strategy. The study was conducted as qualitative single-case study using semi-structured interviews, observation of meetings and internal documents. This paper follows an inductive approach and the chosen analysis method was a systematic content analysis of the interviews. Research findings shows that servitization has impact on competency management in terms of addition of new competencies. It also makes certain existing competencies obsolete and has impact on their definitions. Some of the new competencies identified were, result and entrepreneurship orientation, planning, initiative and taking ownership, information seeking, stress management and team leadership and many more. The research findings also revealed main issues that a manufacturing firm faces in the re-alignment of employees competencies to the new strategy of servitization. These issues were mainly lack of consensus in terms of required competencies and their definitions and important competency based trainings; understanding of business strategy; the lack of focus on certain important processes which are potential source of competency improvement, competency development, lack of certain processes and systems important for improving individual competencies, identification of right set of trainings and aligning the content to business strategy, lack of information, and using old system.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format