New service development at the multinational level

Abstract

Services have recently become the most important sector in terms of employment and have also been the most active in internationalizing their operations. It represented 62% of the world inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2006 (UNCTAD, 2008 in Pla-Barber and Ghauri, 2012). This strategic decision implied the contact with different cultures, different economic, political, social and legal contexts. Moreover, to remain competitive in the evolving market, companies have to innovate the existing services and to offer new ones, expanding their businesses to other countries. The purpose of our study is to understand how a multinational company develops new services in several countries at the same time. The literature review presented concerns the areas of New Service Development (NSD) and Internationalization. The concept of internationalization is defined and, in order to understand the process of international development, the internal and external factors that influence the development process are analyzed. Then, the outcomes of the international development process - the concepts of architecture, modularity and platforms that are part of the process structure – are presented. After the literature review, data was collected from a real multinational company through an interview so that our research question could be answered. We can now argue that companies do use a NSD process, composed by interactive and non-linear stages, where the components are standardized and the structure modular so that the services can be customized without losing its consistency. We proposed a framework, so that the NSD process of the studied company could be seen more clearly. Costumers influence the development process through the participation during the service’s creation by the senior manager. Staff expatriation is not considered in a company with a multinational structure. Socio-cultural factors do not influence the core service, once it is so simple that can be adaptable to all companies and customers. In the end, this study has contributed to deepen the understanding in what relates the complete NSD process and its development in several countries at the same time. It clarifies that the NSD process does not need to change when it is simultaneously developed in more than one country at the same time. It provides a guideline for other managers that aim to internationally develop their businesses overseas and determines future researches in the multinational NSD field.

Date of Award	8 Oct 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Sofia Pinto (Supervisor)