Exploitation, Exploration, or Ambidextrousness—An Analysis of the Necessary Conditions for the Success of Digital Servitisation

The aim of this paper was to investigate the level of necessity for one of the three conditions (organisational capabilities), i.e., exploitation, exploration, and organisational ambidexterity to achieve the desired level of business performance in digital servitisation of manufacturing enterprises. Servitisation (at present, also in combination with Industry 4.0 solutions) is perceived as an important factor for the competitiveness of manufacturers. The idea of (digital) servitisation can also be considered in terms of sustainability. The main expectation here is that successful servitisation will result in a lower environmental impact by moving away from the traditional business model, in which the manufacturer produces the products and then transfers the responsibility for their ownership and use to the customer, towards achieving benefits from the customers’ use of the products (the product remains the property of the manufacturer). Achieving success in digital servitisation requires, among other things, appropriate use of dynamic capabilities, such as exploitation, exploration, or their combination, i.e., organisational ambidexterity. However, it is still unclear to what extent an ambidextrous organisation engages in both types of activities to increase the combined level of exploration or exploitation and how this affects company performance in digital servitisation. On the basis of a survey of a sample of 167 manufacturers, the necessary conditions for achieving the desired performance values were determined. For this purpose, one non-parametric method was used, i.e., necessary condition analysis (NCA). The results show that ambidexterity is not, in every case, a necessary condition for achieving better performance in digital servitisation. Organisational ambidextrousness is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for better performance in dimensions such as market share, customer retention, sales growth, and overall firm performance. For competitive position, the limiting factor is exploration only, whereas for customer satisfaction, it is exploitation.