Does service modularity enhance new service development performance in supply chains: an empirical study

PurposeCustomer firms and suppliers are valuable knowledge resources that can be used for achieving superior new service development (NSD) performance. This study aims to investigate how supply chain relationship quality (SCRQ) and knowledge sharing promote the success of NSD, and examines service modularity as an important contingency factor that enhances NSD performance in supply chains. Design/methodology/approachBased on service-dominant logic, this study builds a conceptual model to empirically explore the impacts of SCRQ and knowledge sharing on NSD performance, and highlights the moderating effect of service modularity by means of survey methodology of 295 Chinese service firms to test the research hypotheses. FindingsRegression analysis results show that SCRQ has significant positive effects on knowledge sharing and NSD performance; knowledge sharing plays a partial intermediary role between SCRQ and NSD performance; and service modularity partially moderates the relationships between SCRQ, knowledge sharing and NSD performance. Research limitations/implicationsGeneralizations here are limited to Chinese service firms. Service modularity in manufacturing firms experimenting with servitization has yet to be examined and provides a good avenue for future research. Originality/valueThis study contributes to service management literature by providing empirical understanding of how service modularity affects NSD performance in multiprovider contexts. Furthermore, this study offers novel insights on the impacts of inter-firm relationship quality and knowledge sharing in modular collaborative innovation.