Coping with the Challenges of a Heterogeneous Working Context – A Configuration of Individual Competencies for PSS Workers

While new organizational offerings, such as product-service systems (PSS), are evolving from adapted strategic decisions, the actors involved in the dynamic implementation of the product-service work system (PSWS) originate from different organizational backgrounds, contribute from various fields of expertise and are familiarized with different working cultures. This built-in heterogeneity is rooted in three distinct compositional sources of the PSWS and it can be classified into a separation, a variety and a disparity type. It gives floor to the successful co-creation of value but also contains numerous challenges as it demands the integration of product and service dominated logics within a heterogeneous, yet collaborative problem-solving working context. This paper aims at eliciting a set of individual competencies that helps workers cope with the demands of PSWS with specific interest in positive and negative effects of different types of built-in heterogeneity.Data presented result from a survey among PSS engineers across branches and organizational entities that were asked to answer a standardized questionnaire in 2012-2013 about competencies as behavioral ad-hoc regulations for unstandardized problem-solving environments. An explorative factor analysis results in a three-dimensional configuration: a) a set of coordinative practices is bundled for improved problem-solving mainly based on positive variety utilization,b) a set of optimistic information filtering activities is bundled to reduce complexity and to benefit from separation and variety, c) a set of reflective in-depth-learning practices supports a high aim at improving and builds on the utilization of variety and separation effects. Based on this configuration positive effects of PSWS built-in heterogeneity can be maximized while negative effects are minimized.