Digital Servitization And Performance Of Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises

With the development of digital economy,manufacturing servitization has entered a new stage of digital servitization with the empowerment of digital technology.It is of great research significance to explore how new infrastructure,as an endogenous driving force for high-quality economic development,can improve the performance of digital servitization of manufacturing enterprises.The 14th Five-Year Plan clearly puts forward two aspects of digitalization and servitization.One is to develop service-oriented manufacturing,"accelerate the coordinated development of manufacturing and service,promote business model innovation and business form innovation,and promote the transformation of productive manufacturing to serviceoriented manufacturing";the other is to accelerate digital development,"promote the deep integration of digital technology with the real economy.It will enable the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries,give birth to new industries,new forms of business and new models,and strengthen new engines of economic development." However,in the macro context of the global economic downturn,enterprises are facing a difficult survival environment.At the moment,the combination of digitalization and servitization at the micro level is both an opportunity and a challenge.Traditional infrastructure construction such as railways,highways and airports plays a role as external factors,while new infrastructure represented by digital infrastructure is an endogenous driving force for high-quality economic development.Based on this,this paper will focus on whether digital infrastructure has a unique mechanism of action and how it acts on the digital servitization transformation of enterprises.At present,China lacks core competitiveness in servitization such as R&D and design,system integration,overall solutions and personalized customization.The resources and organizational capabilities required by manufacturing enterprises to carry out digital servitization are far beyond the scope that a single enterprise can undertake.While traditional infrastructure is limited by form and boundaries,digital infrastructure plays a critical role in the stability of products and services,the connectivity of organizations,and the consumer experience.In contrast,digital infrastructure is more expandable,integrated and innovative,and the two play different roles in the development of enterprise digital servitization.Therefore,to determine whether the construction of new digital infrastructure,as an endogenous variable,has a positive impact on enterprise digital servitization and enterprise performance,and to find an effective path for its effect on the integration of manufacturing servitization and digitalization,is an important link for traditional manufacturing enterprises to overcome the dilemma.This paper uses 1083 A-share listed traditional manufacturing companies from 2014 to 2019 as research samples,matches the financial data of listed companies,enterprise digital servitization level data obtained through data mining and text analysis,digital infrastructure construction index,and local industrial foundation and economic indicators.This paper establishes the basic model of digital servitization and enterprise performance and the moderating model after adding the digital infrastructure construction index,discusses the influencing mechanism of digital servitization in different dimensions on manufacturing enterprise performance,and the moderating effect of digital infrastructure.The results show that digital infrastructure,as an endogenous macroeconomic factor,has a positive impact on the relationship between digital servitization business model and enterprise performance.The user dimension of digital servitization can greatly improve the performance of manufacturing enterprises in the short term,the output dimension of digital servitization has the most robust impact on the improvement of enterprise performance,and the process dimension of digital servitization is the most sensitive to the adjustment of digital infrastructure construction.On the whole,the construction of digital infrastructure has effectively improved the effect of digital servitization of manufacturing enterprises.This paper reveals how digital servitization improves the performance of traditional manufacturing enterprises,the contributions of digital technology adoption in the realization of digital servitization performance,how digital infrastructure construction contributes to the digital servitization of manufacturing,and how Chinese manufacturing enterprises effectively utilize the important opportunity of new infrastructure.The results show that the three dimensions of digital servitization respectively play a role in promoting the improvement of enterprise performance,especially the process dimension.The improvement of digital infrastructure construction level can make up for this deficiency,and the digital servitization of output dimension and process dimension is more sensitive to this positive adjustment.This paper analyzes the role mechanism of digital servitization in improving the performance of traditional manufacturing enterprises and the role of digital infrastructure in promoting the digital servitization of manufacturing enterprises.The marginal contribution of this paper is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:first,it deconstructs digital servitization from the three dimensions of user,output and process,examines the differences among the three dimensions,and expands the conceptual dimension of digital servitization.Second,within the theoretical framework of digital servitization,digital infrastructure should be constructed as an endogenous variable to regulate the internal mechanism of digital servitization affecting enterprise performance,and the traditional theoretical cognition that infrastructure construction can only play a role as an external environmental factor should be developed.The third is to analyze the differences in the adjustment mechanism of infrastructure construction on the three digital servitization modes,and discuss the threshold restrictions faced by the digital servitization transformation of manufacturing enterprises.The innovation point of this study is that it makes a new attempt for the theoretical integration of digitalization and servitization at the enterprise level.For a long time,the "servitization paradox" has been widely discussed.This paper refers to the existing research on the catalytic path of digitalization to new business models,such as new products derived from data elements,enterprise user relationship network empowered by digital technology,and the promotion of organizational change by digital factors.It deconstructs the concept of digital servitization from three dimensions of user,output and process,and analyzes the differences among the three dimensions.It broadens the original conceptual dimension of manufacturing servitization and digital integration.Second,within the theoretical framework of digital servitization,the logical association of business model,infrastructure and enterprise performance is constructed,which is a continuation of the existing endogenous growth theory.In the context that infrastructure construction only represents traditional infrastructure construction such as railways,highways and airports,existing studies generally believe that the level of infrastructure construction as an external factor limits the digital servitization transformation of enterprises.Prove that digital infrastructure can promote the endogenous growth of enterprises.Third,it complements the theory of digital servitization with a new scenario mechanism.By introducing the variable of digital infrastructure construction level,this paper analyzes the difference in the adjustment mechanism of infrastructure construction on the three digital servitization modes,and discusses the difficulties and opportunities faced by the digital servitization transformation of manufacturing enterprises based on the theory of business ecology.In the existing research,scholars have realized that there are threshold restrictions in the adoption of digital technology at the enterprise level,and it depends on the support of the external environment,and there are many problems in the integration of digital technology and business models.Based on the era scenario of China’s new infrastructure,this paper collects the data of listed companies in the whole manufacturing industry for empirical analysis,which has innovative significance in practical methods and scenario mechanism.