| dc.description.abstract | Unsustainable business practices have led to dramatic sustainability pressures for modern society in
the form of climate change and resource scarcity. A potential solution to meet the challenges of the
climate crisis are product-service-systems (PSSs), which are combined product and service offerings
that together can fulfil customer needs. Through alternative scenarios of product use can PSSs
decrease the consumption of products and therefore hold the promise of delivering economic and
environmental benefits. However, to accelerate the sustainability transition, PSSs must reach an
increasing number of beneficiaries. While prior literature largely focused on the design and
implementation of PSSs, scaling them has only been researched to a minor extent. However, there are
only a few examples of upscaled PSSs, which suggests that scaling PSSs is challenging. Therefore, the
aim of this study was to investigate how product companies can scale PSSs. It has widely been
accepted that scaling PSSs is hindered by internal and external barriers. While external barriers have
received large attention in the literature, internal barriers have been less researched. To broaden the
understanding of the internal barriers firms face and how they can be addressed, this thesis took a
qualitative approach. It studied the case of Fairphone, a Dutch smartphone manufacturer that had
recently introduced a sustainable PSS. Adopting the dynamic capabilities (DC) lens, using an inductive
coding strategy, the research analyzed 17 semi-structured interviews to identify the DCs conducive to
early-stage scaling. By matching the DCs with the barriers they help to address, the study found that
some DCs enable product companies to reduce or remove barriers, while other DCs prevent barriers
from occurring in the first place. The study identified the combinations of DCs that enable product
companies to adopt a service-centered mindset, design fully integrated PSSs, plan and execute the
service rollout, reduce operational costs, as well as identify and pursue cost-effective ways for scaling.
An interesting finding from the case study is that product companies need to foster sensing, seizing,
and reconfiguring capabilities simultaneously, as only in combination can they effectively address the
identified barriers. Future research could focus on identifying the DCs that are conducive to scaling
more mature PSSs that have already moved from initial experimentation to upscaling. | |
