Limited evidence for servitisation in UK publishing: An empirical analysis

Kharlamov, Alexander A.; Parry, Glenn

Abstract

Servitisation is a strategic transition of firms towards the creation of additional value through services. In this study, we adopt a data-driven approach and assume that company activity descriptions are representative of their activity and partly reflect the adopted strategy. We hypothesise that if there is a trend of traditional publishing firms adopting servitisation strategies, this should emerge from textual analysis of company descriptors. Relying on data-driven analysis of publicly available company information for UK and Ireland, we find no significant evidence of strategic diversity as a single group emerges from diverse clustering methods. Our results show either that the publicly available dataset is not representative of firm strategy in the publishing industry or that there is no real evidence of servitisation in the publishing sector. Implications for theory and for industry are discussed.

Citation

Kharlamov, A. A., & Parry, G. (2020). Limited evidence for servitisation in UK publishing: An empirical analysis. International Journal of Business Environment, 11(3), 336-346. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBE.2020.110896

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 24, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Nov 1, 2020
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Apr 24, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 2, 2021
• Journal: International Journal of Business Environment
• Print ISSN: 1740-0589
• Electronic ISSN: 1740-0597
• Publisher: Inderscience
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 336-346
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBE.2020.110896
• Keywords: servitization, publishing, manufacturing, service, servitization, product-service systems, value added, unsupervised
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/848216
• Publisher URL: https://www.inderscience.com/info/ingeneral/forthcoming.php?jcode=ijbe