Over the past two decades, servitization has emerged as a defining transformation in the manufacturing sector. It involves the shift from traditional product-centric models to service-enhanced or service-centric business models, where value is increasingly cocreated with customers through integrated offerings of goods, services and knowledge (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988; Kowalkowski et al., 2017). This evolution is no longer a marginal trend but a pervasive strategic imperative – spurred by digitalization, intensified global competition and the need for more resilient revenue streams (Baines et al., 2020; Rapaccini et al., 2020).
The servitization journey entails the development of complex product-service systems, outcome-based contracts and platform-based ecosystems. This transformation does not simply add services to existing products but implies a profound transformation of business models, organizational processes and market relationships, as it reconfigures value creation, delivery and capture mechanisms (Kohtamäki et al., 2020; Paschou et al., 2020). This transformation is increasingly shaped and accelerated by digital technologies – ranging from the Internet of Things and cloud computing to AI and digital twins – which enable manufacturers to monitor usage, personalize offerings and shift toward outcome-based service models (Coreynen et al., 2017). In this context, the concept of digital servitization has emerged as a research stream exploring how digitalization reshapes firms’ capabilities, value creation mechanisms and customer relationships (Gebauer et al., 2017). More recently, sustainable servitization, as the interaction of sustainability and servitization aiming at reducing resource usage and environmental impact, is representing an interesting and underdeveloped topic deserving more attention from the literature (Kohtamäki et al., 2024).
The implementation of servitization, however, presents significant organizational challenges. Firms must redesign their structures, realign capabilities and navigate the “service paradox,” wherein the pursuit of service-based revenues may increase complexity and costs without immediate returns (Gebauer et al., 2005). This paradox is particularly acute for small- and medium-sized enterprises, which often lack the absorptive capacity to manage the systemic complexity of hybrid offerings (Kowalkowski et al., 2017). The impact of servitization on firm performance may be nonlinear or indirect by interacting with other organizational strategies and related strategic capabilities, such as sustainability emphasis. In this sense, servitization represents a business model that can help address the challenge of balancing economic performance with environmental sustainability (Menon et al., 2024).
Despite the breadth of scholarship on servitization from strategic, technological and operational perspectives, the role of management accounting (MA) and performance measurement systems (PMS) in this transformation remains relatively underexplored and theoretically underdeveloped (Reim et al., 2015; Baines et al., 2017). Traditional MA frameworks – largely rooted in goods-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004) – struggle to accommodate the features of intangibility, coproduction and lifecycle orientation of services (Cinquini and Tenucci, 2016; Laine et al., 2012). These limitations are particularly evident when firms seek to design and evaluate hybrid value propositions, where services are tightly coupled with physical products and value is realized over time and through use. As a result, many firms pursuing servitization still lack robust tools for cost attribution, value pricing, profitability analysis and strategic alignment across product–service boundaries (Adrodegari and Saccani, 2017; Bigdeli et al., 2017): a reconceptualization of MA is needed to align with the principles of service-dominant logic (SDL), where value is cocreated through interactions and resource integration rather than embedded in discrete transactions (Grönroos, 2008).
Under SDL, accounting must shift from capturing value-in-exchange to enabling and evidencing value-in-use – an inherently subjective and context-dependent outcome. The transition from manufacturing-centric to service-centric models entails a shift in the underlying value logic from linear transactions and value-in-exchange to ongoing, interactive value co-creation. Thus, servitization introduces profound changes in the managerial and informational infrastructure of manufacturing firms, particularly in the realm of accounting and control. In this context, traditional accounting frameworks – focused on product cost calculation, efficiency metrics and short-term financial performance – are increasingly inadequate to support the complexity, relationality, sustainability and temporality of service-based value propositions.
First, as firms shift from selling standalone products to offering integrated solutions and outcomes, they encounter new complex accounting objects – such as customer lifetime value, service contracts and platform engagement metrics – that are not easily captured by conventional cost accounting systems (Cinquini and Tenucci, 2016; Adrodegari and Saccani, 2017). These objects reflect the complexity of value creation in service-oriented contexts, where relational, temporal and contextual dimensions are critical.
Second, servitization disrupts traditional temporalities of accounting. Whereas traditional product-based models focus on one-off transactions and short-term margins, service-centric models involve extended revenue cycles, subscription schemes and outcome-based pricing mechanisms that unfold over time (Laine et al., 2012). This requires the management accounting and control system (MACS) the integration of ex ante and ex post logics – supporting planning, forecasting and business model innovation while also enabling real-time monitoring, feedback collection and performance adjustment over the service lifecycle (Reim et al., 2015). In such contexts, cost and performance management must be future-oriented, adaptable and responsive to cocreated value outcomes.
Further, servitization expands the focus of control from internal operations to customer sites, digital interfaces and broader business ecosystems. Control systems are evolving from rigid, hierarchical models toward more interactive, enabling and platform-based forms (Caglio and Ditillo, 2021). In the context of servitization strategies, these systems foster flexibility and learning, supporting iterative experimentation with new service offerings, the incorporation of real-time customer feedback and the codesign of solutions in uncertain environments. Performance measurement systems, for instance, are increasingly designed not only to track financial outcomes but also to monitor customer experience, service usage, data-driven feedback loops and cocreated outcomes. These systems are tasked with enabling strategic alignment among diverse stakeholders – internally across functions and externally across partners – by fostering a shared understanding of service performance and ecosystem health. In digitally enabled environments, PMS also act as interfaces between actors, codifying expectations and facilitating accountability in contexts where ownership and responsibility are distributed. Control is increasingly complex as it is exercised at the network level – where multiple actors, often governed by platforms, jointly deliver and capture value.
Finally, in ecosystems characterized by multi-actor collaboration and platform-mediated coordination, MACS play a mediating role. They facilitate trust-building, regulate interorganizational interactions and provide transparency around contributions and value appropriation. In this sense, accounting is not only a tool for internal control but also a boundary object that enables coordination across organizational, cultural and cognitive boundaries. This reconfiguration necessitates new forms of interorganizational control and accountability, including shared metrics, data-driven coordination mechanisms and boundary objects that facilitate alignment among diverse stakeholders.
This special issue of Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management contributes to this body of knowledge by offering four empirically grounded studies that illuminate the interplay between servitization and accounting. The articles here included examine how PMS, digital tools and control practices are reimagined in servitized settings, and each article provides insights into how accounting tools, digital technologies and control practices are mobilized in diverse organizational contexts to support the design, implementation and institutionalization of service-oriented business models.
Tkaczyk et al. (2025) explore the development of digital twins of services as a novel accounting artifact. Through an interventionist case study, the authors demonstrate how animated representations of service processes help organizations visualize, communicate and align around cost implications and control dimensions of new service offerings. The digital twin acts as both a cognitive anchor and a boundary object – bridging technical and managerial domains and making the “invisible” service more tangible for stakeholders. In this case, management control extends beyond numerical representations, incorporating visual, narrative and processual elements to support cross-functional coordination and value justification.
A complementary perspective is offered by Messina and Leotta (2025), who investigate how digitalization supports new product development (NPD) in a servitized context. Drawing on pragmatic constructivism, their study illustrates how digital tools – such as collaborative platforms and simulation software – mediate between diverse organizational topoi, enabling alignment with the firm’s overarching servitization strategy. Here, control is not exerted through rigid metrics but through dialogic integration across functions and through the construction of a shared service-oriented reality. The authors show how accounting becomes performative in shaping strategic decisions and advancing organizational learning across the NPD stage-gate process.
The article by Marelli and Dello Sbarba (2025) broadens the scope to the ecosystem level, analyzing the role of PMS in a digital servitization journey within the logistics sector of the wine and spirits industry. Their longitudinal study reveals how PMS evolve from tools of internal control to platform enablers of coordination, communication and collaboration among heterogeneous actors. Notably, while the metrics remain consistent, their application and interpretive use shift over time – becoming more dynamic, dialogical and integrative. This reinforces the notion that in digital servitization contexts, accounting is not simply about performance monitoring but about creating shared frameworks for action in high-uncertainty, multi-actor environments.
Finally, Wu et al. (2025) provide a longitudinal narrative of a craft brewery’s servitization journey, offering insight into how MACS can influence organizational identity and cultural alignment. Their study emphasizes the role of people and cultural controls in shaping a “service identity” grounded in authenticity, community and innovation. As the firm navigates between goods and service logics, accounting practices both reflect and reinforce strategic experimentation, enabling the firm to pivot and scale its service-based offerings. This contribution underscores the symbolic and institutional dimensions of control systems in the context of servitization – particularly in small, founder-led enterprises where hybrid logics coexist and evolve.
Overall, the research in this issue positions accounting not as a passive recorder of servitization but as an active agent in enabling, shaping and legitimizing its implementation and success. Across these studies, a common theme emerges: management accounting and control systems in servitization are not static instruments of compliance, cost containment or ex-post rationalization, but rather dynamic and constitutive infrastructures that play a formative role in organizational transformation. As firms pursue servitization, MACS evolve into enabling technologies that do not merely support but actively mediate, shape and legitimize new forms of value creation. In this context, accounting becomes a performative agent – a set of practices that bring into being the very phenomena relevant to measure (Quattrone, 2016).
In conclusion, accounting systems in servitized firms are increasingly designed to enable rather than constrain. They are called upon not simply to monitor consequences but to guide strategic transformation – to function as infrastructures of possibility that allow organizations to imagine, justify and operationalize new modes of value creation and delivery. This reimagining of MACS requires a departure from traditional assumptions of linear causality and centralized control toward more relational, dialogic and distributed models of accounting that are attuned to the complexities of ecosystems, co-creation and digital platforms, which inform the servitization process of transformation.
