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Given the growing emphasis on environmental consciousness and sustainability as core principles within most companies, product-service systems are recognized as strategic approaches to achieving sustainability objectives. Consequently, understanding consumer acceptance of these systems is of paramount importance. This study seeks to explore users' perspectives on the barriers that impede the adoption of product-service systems, intending to prioritize these obstacles.

This study utilizes a social media-based approach, specifically analyzing tweets related to Zipcar, an American car rental company that exemplifies a usage-oriented product-service system. The analysis identifies the factors influencing the acceptance of this system. The study utilizes topic modeling and sentiment analysis techniques to analyze the tweets. The opportunity value of each topic is determined, aiding in the identification of topics that require improvement. Furthermore, the interrelation between topics is explored, followed by correlation analysis to assess their significance.

Eight topics strongly related to the keywords are identified. Among them, “responsiveness”, “responsibility”, and “trust” hold the highest opportunity values. The findings emphasize the importance of service providers proactively addressing the obstacles that impede consumers' willingness to adopt product-service systems. Prioritization should be given to topics with higher opportunity values.

This research uncovers the primary obstacles to adopting the product-service system by directly considering consumer opinions and providing a prioritized list of these obstacles.

Despite increasing focus among scholars and practitioners on the design of product-service systems (PSS), there exists no compilation of current knowledge on the role played by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in designing such systems. Thus, this paper sets out to identify and organise the existing research and suggest questions for future research.

A systematic literature review was performed to identify and provide in-depth details on key themes in the literature addressing the design of PSS in SMEs.

This paper identifies five themes in the literature on the design of PSS in SMEs: motives, challenges, SME characteristics, methods and digitalisation. The themes are interrelated, and SME characteristics seem to be at the core as they are related to all the other themes. Gaps in the current knowledge are identified, and questions for future research are suggested.

The suggestions for future research provide a starting point for expanding the research on PSS design and devising practical support for SMEs.

Manufacturing enterprises have started to offer the “outcome” derived from machines with the help of outcome-based contracts (OBCs). Offering OBCs leads to benefits such as increased revenues, stronger customer relationships and sustainability. However, implementing OBCs requires critical capabilities. Existing literature has focused on identifying these necessary capabilities, but the prioritization and interrelationships among them remain unexplored. This study aims to address this gap.

Our study employs a hybrid analytical hierarchy process and interpretative structural modeling approach to prioritize and map interrelationships among OBC-related capabilities within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The findings highlight the importance of digitalization capabilities such as data privacy and security, remote monitoring, and data analytics; and organizational and governance capabilities, including quantifying, controlling, and monitoring risks, teamwork, and leadership, are highlighted.

We quantitatively prioritize OBC capabilities and establish their level-wise structural interrelationships, which will facilitate a more effective and efficient implementation of OBCs. Due to the emergent nature of OBCs, our study could identify just one SME case company meeting our selection criteria.

Existing OBC literature focusses on the design of OBCs in large companies. Similarly, earlier capability-related OBC literature is oriented toward identifying the OBC capabilities to perform specific functions. However, in the current study, we propose a systematic decision-making approach that comprehensively prioritizes and identifies the interrelationships among the capabilities necessary to provide OBCs, thus complementing the existing scientific literature on OBCs. In addition, we focus on SMEs, that have specific limitations and characteristics.

While servitization has been recognised for its potential to augment organizational revenue and fortify competitive advantage, the exploration of alternative servitization trajectories to the classical servitization model has been little explored in literature. Recent literature introduces the “service paradox” and presents different trajectories to the classical model, but it does not explain why a company chooses one trajectory instead of another. Therefore, this study aims to provide a model that, based on the contextual factors present, recommends which servitization trajectory the company should choose.

This study uses a combination of design science research (DSR) and context, intervention, mechanisms and outcomes (CIMO) to propose the model. An initial contextual factors list was created based on the literature, refined by the company’s employees and evaluated in three selected initiatives in the focal company. Furthermore, based on the understanding of the CIMO logic elements, four design propositions were elaborated to summarize the main findings of the study.

The study has demonstrated that the choice of a servitisation trajectory is intricately tied to a multitude of contextual factors, prompting organisations to deviate from conventional models towards alternative paths. Furthermore, the research sheds light on the underlying mechanisms and contextual drivers that shape servitisation decisions within the context of a consumer goods manufacturer. The analysis underscores the pivotal role of market dynamics and strategic adaptability in shaping servitisation strategies, underscoring the importance of customized approaches that cater to the distinct circumstances of each organisations.

The research contributes to both theory and practice by offering profound insights into the complex nature of servitisation, advocating for continuous adaptation and strategic alignment with market demands. For practitioners and decision-makers, the study provides valuable guidance on enhancing service offerings and navigating the complexities of servitisation within specific sectors, fostering a culture of learning and adaptation to drive sustainable growth.

In the accounting field, sustainability accounting (SA) has evolved as a valuable tool that links improvements in environmental, social and governance issues to financial performance. This study aims to examine the structure and evolution of SA research, map the state of knowledge and analyse the literature trends and gaps.

The study adopts a bibliometric review technique with data sourced from the Scopus database. A total of 7,049 extant literature spanning from 1982 to 2022 was analysed using the VOSviewer software.

The authors find a significant growth in the number of publications on SA research, primarily driven by collaboration among researchers from Europe and America. The analysis highlights emerging themes, structure and discusses in detail the changing phases of SA research over the past four decades while highlighting key events that have impacted the development of SA research. Furthermore, the dominant theories used by extant studies are discussed and potential avenues for future research are provided. The authors draw the attention of the research community to the dominant authors, the most cited articles, prominent publication outlets and countries advancing research in this field.

This study advances knowledge on SA research by providing a retrospective assessment of the state of knowledge in the field while highlighting avenues for future research.

Despite the increasing attention given to product-service integration (PSI), little is known about this innovation strategy from a key decision-maker’s perspective. To address this gap, our study draws from personality psychology and decision-making (DM) logics theory to better understand why and how companies’ decision-makers strategize for PSI.

Using an abductive, empirics-first approach, we identify the study’s theoretical building blocks, followed by an exploratory quantitative analysis to generate new theory. We propose a fit-as-mediation conceptual framework suggesting that (1) specific personality traits [i.e. honesty-humility (H), emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C) and openness to experience (O) (HEXACO)] make decision-makers more likely to include PSI in their company’s strategy and (2) depending on their personality, they apply different DM logics (i.e. causation or effectuation) to do so. To empirically examine this, we use data from 289 SMEs’ decision-makers.

We report several meaningful relationships among our key theoretical constructs. For instance, we find that conscientious decision-makers are more likely to develop a PSI strategy via causation, whereas extravert decision-makers are more likely to do so via both causation and effectuation.

This service study is the first to apply the well-established HEXACO Personality Inventory to companies’ key decision-makers. Moreover, it contributes to the microfoundations of PSI strategy and DM logic theories.

Responding to calls for deeper analysis of the conceptual foundations of service infusion in manufacturing, this paper examines the underlying assumptions that: (i) manufacturing firms incorporating services follow a pathway, moving from pure-product to pure-service offerings, and (ii) profits increase linearly with this process. We propose that these assumptions are inconsistent with the premises of behavioural and learning theories.

Machine learning algorithms are applied to test whether a successive process, from a basic to a more advanced offering, creates optimal performance. The data were gathered through two surveys administered to USA manufacturing firms in 2021 and 2023. The first included a training sample comprising 225 firms, whilst the second encompassed a testing sample of 105 firms.

Analysis shows that following the base-intermediate-advanced services pathway is not the best predictor of optimal performance. Developing advanced services and then later adding less complex offerings supports better performance.

Manufacturing firms follow heterogeneous pathways in their service development journey. Non-servitised firms need to carefully consider their contextual conditions when selecting their initial service offering. Starting with a single service offering appears to be a superior strategy over providing multiple services.

The machine learning approach is novel to the field and captures the key conditions for manufacturers to successfully servitise. Insight is derived from the adoption and implementation year datasets for 17 types of services described in previous qualitative studies. The methods proposed can be extended to assess other process-based models in related management fields (e.g., sand cone).

Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.

This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.

Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.

This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.

Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.

Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.

Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.

As technology aspect of agriculture becomes more and more important with the time to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable and smart way, agriculture practices become more interdisciplinary. Furthermore, agricultural practices are affected by urban and rural planning enabling urban and rural farming. Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry can support food security through the integration of agricultural practices and technologies into the built environment, its interior design, and greenhouses supporting urban and rural farming. Based on the literature review, this chapter aims to investigate ways for enhancing AEC industry’s and its professionals’ contribution to food security and sustainable agricultural practices. This chapter highlights roles of the AEC industry in enhancing food security and sustainable agricultural practices. This chapter emphasizes the importance of undergraduate and graduate curriculums of future AEC industry professionals (e.g., architects, interior architects, civil engineers) to equip them with the skills and knowledge of sustainable agricultural practices and technologies integrated greenhouses, built environment and indoor environment, and interior design. For this reason, agricultural policies need to cover food security-related interdisciplinary education and training (e.g., renewable energy-based agriculture integrated built environment) of AEC industry professionals. Agricultural policies need to be designed with the contribution of and considering AEC industry professionals as they are among the main stakeholders of food security and renewable energy-based agriculture-integrated built environment. Furthermore, this chapter highlights how AEC industry, in compliance with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and countries sustainable and resilient development plans, can contribute to food security and sustainability. This chapter can be beneficial to all stakeholders of the sustainable agricultural practices.