Brewing a service-identity: management controls in craft beer servitization

Julia Yonghua Wu, Chris Akroyd and Frederick Ng

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 2024, vol. 22, issue 3, 321-346

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to examine the management controls that support (and fail to support) a craft brewery’s servitization journey from start-up, through growth, to maturity. It enriches our understanding of how management controls can facilitate the discovery of a service-identity that provides the foundation for servitization. Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on in-depth interviews, fieldwork and secondary data analyses, this paper reports on a longitudinal case study of a craft brewery. The authors trace the case company’s servitization journey using a service-dominant logic theoretical perspective. This perspective focuses us on how the value of a product is cocreated with customers, rather than being created by the firm and then distributed. Findings - The study found that many management controls emerged at the craft brewery from start-up to maturity. Some management controls supported a goods logic, while others supported a service logic. The findings highlight how people and cultural controls in particular enabled the company to move toward a service logic focused on servitization. These management controls informed the evolution of offerings, structure reconfiguration and resources at the craft brewery necessary to support servitization. Originality/value - Studying a craft brewery contributes an alternative type of manufacturing context and shows how service-identity features such as craftiness, collectiveness, neolocalism and innovation affect a company’s servitization journey.

Keywords: Management control systems; Service-dominant logic; Long tail market; Business model; Innovation; Craft brewing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:qrampp:qram-10-2022-0172

DOI: 10.1108/QRAM-10-2022-0172

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