Influence of Organizational Ambidextrous Culture in Manufacturing Enterprises on Service Innovation Performance

Abstract

With the development of the service economy, the service-oriented transformation of the manufacturing industry has become a crucial strategy pursued by major manufacturing enterprises globally. They must constantly innovate their services and provide customers with comprehensive solutions to succeed in a dynamic market environment. Improving service innovation performance becomes a key element. Based on the service-dominant logic, this paper analyzes the organizational ambidextrous culture in the manufacturing industry’s service transformation. A theoretical model is established with ambidextrous culture as the independent variable, service innovation performance as the dependent variable, external collaboration and internal collaboration as the mediating variables, and environmental uncertainty as the moderating variable. This study examines how an ambidextrous culture affects service innovation in manufacturing companies based on data from firms engaged in service innovation. By using the structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing, SPSS and AMOS version 23.0 software for analyzing, the following conclusions are obtained: first, organizational ambidextrous culture has a significant positive impact on service innovation performance; second, external collaboration and internal collaboration play mediating roles in the relationship between ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance; third, environmental uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between ambidextrous culture, internal and external collaboration, and service innovation performance.

1. Introduction

Under the impact of economic globalization and technological development, manufacturing enterprises are facing several bottlenecks such as serious product homogeneity and increasingly fierce competition. Based on service-dominant logic [1], seeking service-oriented economic growth has become the only choice for manufacturing enterprises to gain competitive advantages. In the implementation process of servitization, service innovation, as the basis for enterprises to establish sustainable competitiveness, has become a strategic choice for manufacturing enterprises to cope with product homogeneity and customer demand diversification. Service innovation performance is an important index to measure service innovation activities, and exploring the influencing factors of service innovation performance has become an important topic in the field of manufacturing servitization.

During the process of transforming manufacturing enterprises towards a service-oriented approach, there may arise situations that do not align with the theoretical framework. According to studies conducted by Gebauer, Neely, Saara, and Muhammad, among others [2,3,4,5], transforming a business through servitization does not always result in improved performance. In fact, it may even lead to a “servitization paradox” where profits decrease, and the risk of bankruptcy increases. To prevent these issues, manufacturing companies should revamp their organizational components to facilitate service innovation initiatives during service transformation [6]. It not only needs to quickly identify and predict market demands to flexibly adapt to changes in the external environment [7], but also maintain consistency to strengthen the stability and cohesion within the organization [8]. The organization’s ambidextrous culture can fulfill both needs simultaneously, demonstrating its ability to respond promptly to external demands [9,10]. Efficient internal integration requires adaptability and coherence to work together effectively. According to Chandler’s theory, for a manufacturing enterprise to attain success in service strategy, it is essential to have a well-structured organizational framework that supports the business environment and strategy. This highlights the significance of maintaining a cohesive relationship between the company’s structure, strategy, and environment. Some scholars even believe that the servitization of the manufacturing industry is a process of organizational change [11,12]. The input–process–output model of organizational creativity proposed by Woodman et al. also shows that factors such as organizational culture and organizational structure are important characteristics that affect organizational creativity [13]. Among the management factors that affect organizational innovation, organizational culture innovation plays a fundamental role and plays a key guiding role in the innovation mode of enterprises to a large extent [14].

This research advances three main aspects of the current literature. First of all, numerous scholars have conducted thorough research on the effects of organizational culture and structure on service innovation. However, most of these studies concentrate on analyzing how a single culture impacts organizational innovation [15,16,17]. There has been a lack of discussion on how culture affects an organization’s internal integration and external adaptability from an ambidextrous culture perspective. Additionally, there are limited explorations on the balance and complementarity of organizational ambidexterity studies. This research delves into the concept of manufacturing servitization with a focus on the significance of organizational culture and ambidexterity theory in this context. It comprehensively explores the dimensions of ambidexterity and balance by using a cultural trait model to analyze the notion of ambidextrous culture.

Second, when examining how ambidextrous culture affects service innovation performance, the important role of collaborative behavior has not yet been fully recognized [18]. Moreover, ambidextrous culture focuses on both internal consistency and external adaptability, and it is of great theoretical significance to simultaneously explore the mediating role of internal collaboration and external collaboration in the relationship between ambidextrous culture and service innovation. In previous research, scholars often confused the concepts of collaboration and cooperation. However, in this paper, we have clearly distinguished the two and defined external collaboration from the perspective of the service ecosystem and internal collaboration from the perspective of functional integration. Additionally, we have analyzed the impact of both external and internal collaboration on service innovation performance.

Third, considering the realities of manufacturing companies, such as constantly evolving market demands, rapidly advancing technology, and fierce competition, adaptability and integration efficiency are crucial for success in the face of environmental uncertainty. Organizations that effectively implement change will gain a competitive edge and enhance their performance in dynamic environments. This article asserts that the impact of ambidextrous culture, external collaboration, and internal collaboration varies depending on the level of environmental uncertainty. As such, introducing environmental uncertainty as a moderating variable helps to refine the application of these factors in promoting corporate service innovation performance.

Based on this in-depth analysis, this paper develops a comprehensive theoretical model with organizational ambidextrous culture as the independent variable, internal, and external collaboration as the mediating variables, environmental uncertainty as the moderating variable, and service innovation performance as the dependent variable. Data were collected through surveys and the theoretical model was tested empirically, yielding research findings of significant theoretical and practical value.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Organizational Ambidextrous Culture

The concept of ambidextrous culture is an important area of study in the realm of organizational culture. This novel idea has been developed by combining and extending research on organizational culture and organizational ambidexterity theory. It is rooted in the theory of organizational ambidexterity [19]. The implications of this concept for fostering innovation and adaptability in organizations are significant and warrant further investigation. As such, this paper aims to explore the theoretical foundations of ambidextrous culture and to provide practical recommendations for its implementation in organizational settings. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, this paper seeks to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in this area and to provide a framework for future research. Scholars in different research fields have discussed the connotation of organizational ambidexterity from the perspectives of organizational learning, technological innovation, strategic management, and organizational design, and found that organizational ambidexterity focuses on coordination rather than the trade-off of two conflicting needs within the organization [20,21]. Organizational culture is an important situational factor that affects corporate innovation [22,23,24], but the ambidextrous characteristics of organizational culture have not been given sufficient attention in existing research, and there are few literatures that deeply think about organizational culture from the perspective of organizational ambidexterity. This paper adopts the viewpoint proposed by Fey and Denison, which defines organizational ambidextrous culture as the fusion of two cultural types, emphasizing internally integrated coherent culture and externally responsive adaptive culture, in which the two cultures are simultaneously balanced and complementary [25]. Consistency culture refers to a collaborative culture in which all activities within an organization strive for a common vision, emphasizing the need for rule requirements and building a harmonious interpersonal atmosphere to reduce the organization’s need for explicit control systems and related costs, to achieve consistency and meet the organization’s internal needs [26,27]. This cultural dimension satisfies the requirements of the situational duality for all activities within the organization to be efficient and consistent when facing goals and visions [28]. Adaptive culture is a fast-response culture that reconstructs its own capabilities in response to the needs of environmental changes. It focuses on transforming external demands and customer expectations into internal changes. Through organizational learning and encouraging members to create changes, the organization can improve its ability to respond to dynamic changes in the external environment [29,30]. This cultural dimension satisfies the requirement of the ability to adapt to changes in the external environment in situational duality. In the process of shaping a consistent culture and an adaptive culture, an organization can only achieve a strong ambidextrous culture if the balance between the two is considered [31]. The ambidexterity involved in this paper is more complicated than the co-existing and complementary meanings in previous studies. Upon thorough examination of ambidexterity, it has been discovered that it consists of two cultures—adaptive culture and consistent culture—which must be integrated to achieve optimal organizational duality. This paper advances existing ambidextrous culture research by defining and measuring the concept of ambidextrous culture and exploring its practical applications.

2.2. Internal and External Collaboration

2.2.1. External Collaboration

There are different definitions of “collaboration” in academia, and in the literature of new product development, collaboration is an ability to update skills and adapt to environmental challenges [32]. Tsanos et al. believe that collaboration is characterized by shared responsibility, shared plans, and information exchange among organizations [33,34]. Obradovic et al. proposed that inter-firm collaboration refers to the relationship between multiple independent organizations that exchange resources, act in concert, and have clear agreements [35]. Hardy et al. believe that collaboration is an inter-organizational relationship that is negotiated in the process of continuous communication [36]. Gulati et al. believe that collaboration is the sum of coordination and cooperation between alliance partners to achieve goals [37]. Xavier and Nuno believe collaboration is defined as a process in which participants voluntarily help others to achieve a common or private goal [38]. Schleimer describes collaboration as a phenomenon composed of multiple elements or dimensions, such as joint participation, mutual trust, etc. [39]. Then, Schleimer and Faems defined inter-enterprise collaboration as collaboration between functional units of different enterprises [40]. Anant proposed to incorporate supplier participation, customer participation, and cross-departmental participation into a unified framework, and tested the existence of collaboration capabilities and the interdependence of the three [41]. Sanders elaborated on the aspects of information sharing and cost reduction in organizational collaboration [42]. In summary, this paper adopts Neu and Brown’s viewpoints, and from the perspective of organizational boundaries, B2B services of manufacturing enterprises, the ideal organizational structure in the innovation process is divided into external collaboration and internal collaboration [43]. The external collaboration of enterprises is mainly manifested in the pooling of resources and capabilities between enterprises and striving to achieve common and individual goals [44]. The exchange relationship between enterprises can make benefit maximization and cost minimization can stimulate enterprise innovation and increase customer satisfaction [19,45]. Chisanga [46] proposed that external collaboration of enterprises can obtain multiple benefits, such as cost and risk sharing and access to skills and resources of other enterprises. In addition, Kim [47] believes that external collaboration can also create opportunities for the company and reduce the inherent cost of development. This research defines external collaboration as the collaboration between the focus enterprise and other subjects such as customers, suppliers, distributors, competitors, etc., and consists of three elements: mutual trust, joint investment, and resource integration. Mutual trust includes loyalty trust and capability trust. Joint investment is manifested in the investment of capital, technology, and other resources by each subject in the collaboration process, and some results have certain specificity. On the one hand, joint investment results from the joint exclusivities of resources, such as jointly holding patents, facilities, etc., which is conducive to the sharing of resources [48]. On the other hand, joint investment reduces the innovation cost of the collaborative subject, which is beneficial to innovation activities and promotes the development of collaborative relationships. Resource integration is the process of combining resources from various sources through effective methods during external collaboration. Identification and acquisition through external collaboration facilitate resource integration to form a new resource system.

2.2.2. Internal Collaboration

The internal collaboration of enterprises is mainly manifested as collaboration between functional departments [49]. Atuahene-Gima regards internal collaboration as a knowledge-integration mechanism, which is manifested as the coordination between various departments of the enterprise to obtain external knowledge [50]; Hernandez pointed out that internal collaboration is two or more departments working together, sharing a common vision; the process of sharing resources and achieving common goals [51]. Melander and Tell believe that internal collaboration is essential for an organizational structure that aligns with the external market. They highlight the importance of resource flow in the collaboration process [52]. Studies have shown that the significant impact of internal collaboration on innovation performance is achieved through knowledge integration activities [53]. Jugenda pointed out that integration usually relies on the collaboration between different roles within the company, thereby shortening the product development cycle and speeding up the speed of new products to market [54]. Troy pointed out that in the stages of product development, production and commercialization, and the collaborative activities of R&D, marketing and manufacturing departments are realized through resource sharing, communication, and innovation participation [55]. Wang and Lin classify cross-functional collaboration into three dimensions: collaborative leadership, information sharing, and trust [56]. Ghobadi et al. measured cross-functional collaboration from three dimensions of task orientation, communication, and interpersonal relationship [57]. Jassawalla found that the uniqueness of highly collaborative cross-functional innovation teams is reflected in the team members’ shared risks, shared benefits, joint decision-making, and information sharing [58]. Luca et al. believe that cross-functional collaboration ensures the consistency of goals among functional units and can reorganize resources such as knowledge from different functions [59,60]. To sum up, this paper defines the internal collaboration of an enterprise as the collaboration among functional departments within the focal enterprise, which consists of three elements: consistent goals, shared responsibilities, and resource restructuring. Consistent goals are the basis of internal collaboration. All functional departments have the same understanding of the overall objectives of the enterprise, and the overall objectives and departmental objectives promote each other. Goal consistency is the glue for collaborative relationships across functions, providing them with a vision of a shared destiny that generates trust and relational commitment across departments. The process of internal collaboration is manifested as shared responsibility. All functional departments participate in the decision-making process on an equal footing, contribute equally to development, complement each other to the best of their ability, and share responsibility for collaborative outcomes. Responsibility sharing can increase the sense of participation and self-efficacy of departments, and at the same time effectively curb the behaviors of taking advantage of each other’s weaknesses to improve their own efficiency, competing for limited resources, shifting responsibility, and competing for merit, which runs through the entire process of internal collaboration. Resource restructuring is an important result of internal collaboration. Resource restructuring refers to the adjustment of certain elements of the organization, such as organizational structure, so that the enterprise can use existing resources in different ways, combine resources in new ways, or achieve efficient use of resources.

2.3. Service Innovation and Service Innovation Performance

Scholars give different opinions on the concept of service innovation. Faïz and Gallou pointed out that service innovation is an innovation activity on “service products” and “service process” [61]. The Fitzsimons give the definition of service innovation from two aspects of broad sense and narrow sense. In a broad sense, service innovation refers to all innovative behaviors about services or services adopted by all industries; in a narrow sense, service innovation refers to innovative behaviors in the service industry. Reviewing the existing literature around the research topic of manufacturing enterprise service innovation, most scholars conduct research from two perspectives: one is the strategic perspective, thinking about the connotation, mode, and function of service innovation strategy; the other is the process perspective, focusing on the influencing factors of service innovation in manufacturing enterprises. Scholars from a strategic perspective, such as Wise and Baumgartne [62], proposed three strategic models for service innovation: one for the entire product life cycle, one for customer interaction, and one for overall solutions. Among them, the third strategic model of “overall solution” emphasizes that manufacturing companies stand on the customer’s side and provide them with high-value “product + service” overall solutions. This paper explores the service innovation of manufacturing enterprises from the perspective of process and identifies the organizational factors that affect the service innovation of manufacturing enterprises. As an important index to measure the service innovation achievements of manufacturing enterprises, service innovation performance has not yet been uniformly defined in academic circles, and most of them use multi-dimensional indicators to evaluate service innovation performance. For example, Brentani explained the service innovation performance of enterprises from four perspectives: sales and market performance, competition performance, financial indicators, and cost performance. Cooper and Kleinschmidt, respectively, explained service innovation performance from financial performance, opportunity window, and market impact [63]. Voss believes the effect of innovation is manifested in three aspects: quality, finance, and competitiveness [64]. On this basis, Hsueh et al. tried to measure service innovation performance from two dimensions of service innovation results and service innovation process. The latter mainly refers to the standard cost, effectiveness, and speed of services [65]. Kaplan and Norton evaluate service innovation performance from four dimensions of finance, customers, internal business processes, learning, and growth, that is, the balanced scorecard evaluation system [66]. Regarding the influencing factors of service innovation performance, Statsenko emphasized the importance of strengthening supply chain cooperation. Customer collaboration can enrich the diversification of enterprise services and markets, thereby positively affecting service innovation performance [67]; Schaarschmidt et al. believe that for enterprises with mixed products, the implementation of service customization strategy needs to promote customer interaction, and then improve product and service innovation performance [68]. The success or failure of an enterprise’s service innovation can be measured by three aspects: corporate finance, customer satisfaction, and internal development [69], and service innovation performance can be defined as the newly developed services of the enterprise and the improvement activities made to the existing services meet the financial requirements of the enterprise, customers, and the degree of internal development.

3. Research Hypothesis

3.1. The Impact of Organizational Ambidextrous Culture on Service Innovation Performance

In the era of economic globalization and continuous technological change, manufacturing servitization is undoubtedly the correct strategic choice to solve the problems of product homogeneity, customer demand diversification, and individualization. This paper refers to the service innovation strategy model proposed by Wise and Baumgartne and explores the organizational factors that affect the service innovation of manufacturing enterprises from the perspective of the process.

In recent years, the research on service innovation performance is, on the one hand, discussing the evaluation system of service innovation performance, and on the other hand, looking for the influencing factors of service innovation performance and exploring how enterprises can restructure organizational elements and adjust innovation under the condition of limited resources, thereby improving the service innovation performance of enterprises. At present, the definition of service innovation performance in academia is not unified but considering the impact of service innovation on enterprises in many aspects, most of them use multi-dimensional indicators to evaluate service innovation performance. This research refers to Storey and Kelly’s optimization results of the balanced scorecard, based on the characteristics of service innovation, from three aspects, corporate finance, customer satisfaction, and internal development, to measure the success of the service innovation goal of the enterprise and define the service innovation performance as the newly developed service of the enterprise. This research also looks at the extent to which the improvement activities made to existing services meet the financial, customer, and internal development of the enterprise.

Organizational culture is one of the important factors in aligning company resources and capabilities with innovation strategies. Effective organizational culture building can be used as an adaptation process, making organizational members aware of threats and opportunities in the environment, and quickly formulating and taking countermeasures. Many studies have proved that culture can be a key factor that promotes or inhibits the development of innovation. Ambidextrous culture, as the embodiment of situational duality in organizational culture, considers the consistency culture of internal integration and the adaptive culture of external response and provides a favorable cultural situation for the organization’s service innovation.

Organizations with an adaptive culture focus on external markets in response to customer needs. Enterprises often fulfill new needs by exploring potential market opportunities through innovative activities, but these come with inherent risks. To mitigate these risks and prevent a decrease in employees’ willingness to innovate, an adaptive culture encourages members to create changes that can quickly and accurately respond to a constantly changing environment; at the same time, rapid response to the market requires expeditious integration within the organization, maintaining a high degree of consistency, and collaboration in the processing of current tasks. Therefore, consistency culture and adaptive culture complement each other, can deal with the contradictions and paradoxes in innovation, and promote the success of service innovation.

If an unbalanced organizational culture is formed within the enterprise and only emphasizes a certain cultural characteristic in the ambidextrous culture, it will inevitably affect the service innovation performance of the organization. When an organization pays too much attention to the adaptive culture and ignores the consistency culture, innovation activities may deviate from the goal, blindly follow market changes, and excessively develop new services, causing enterprises to pay high search and experiment costs and eventually fall into a failure trap. And because the internal integration of an enterprise is the basis for promoting its active participation in external integration activities, the internal chaos caused by the lack of an effective integration mechanism will not be able to make specific innovation plans fall into place; on the contrary, if the organization only emphasizes a consistent culture, innovation activities will tend to maintain internal stability and coordinate the actions of various departments around goals that can improve internal efficiency and new product development performance, but due to the lack of adaptive culture in the organization, the normative order brought by consistency may hinder service innovation, leading to a lack of exploration of external resources and breakthrough innovations. In the absence of a correct judgment on the external environment, organizational goals can easily deviate from market demand, thus affecting the service innovation performance of enterprises. Therefore, in an organization with an ambidextrous culture, the higher the levels of the adaptive culture and the consistency culture, the smaller the difference between the two culture levels, then the stronger the complementary effect of the dual combination dimension and the dual balance dimension will be. It represents an organization that has a stronger ambidextrous culture, which can promote the improvement of enterprise service innovation performance. Hence the hypothesis.

H1: 

Organizational ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on service innovation performance.

3.2. The Influence of Organizational Ambidextrous Culture on External Collaboration

Resource dependence theory holds that the survival and development of an enterprise depends on its ability to obtain resources from the surrounding environment. Facing the diversity and variability of market demand and considering the limitations of the internal resources of the organization, enterprises should establish a self-centered service ecosystem, strengthen the exploration of complementary resources, and cooperate with external entities for collaborative innovation.

The adaptive culture emphasizes the ability of the organization to perceive changes in the external environment and respond quickly, as well as the ability of the organization to make structural adjustments in response. Facing a dynamic and uncertain environment, adaptive culture supports enterprises to adjust their organizational structure and establish collaborative relationships with external entities. The specific manifestations are as follows: firstly, adaptive culture guides enterprises to be customer-oriented, attaches importance to the integration of external resources represented by customer knowledge, and promotes customers and other knowledge providers to participate in the process of service innovation as cooperative partners; secondly, organizational learning as one of the characteristics of adaptive culture guides enterprises to strengthen the exploration and absorption of resources such as new technology knowledge and customer knowledge. It can promote enterprises to obtain inspiration and motivation, and it also reflects the importance of innovation in adaptive culture and the encouragement of innovation model change, breaks the original closed innovation model, organizes and builds external collaboration, and invites collaborating partners to invest in heterogeneous resources and capabilities, with the help of an open innovation model to build the competitive advantage of the focus enterprises.

“Collaborative” culture is one of the main supporting factors of inter-organizational collaboration. Adaptive culture encourages enterprises to bring customers into the collaborative network and integrate other main resources to create services for them. The enterprise has changed from the original closed innovation to open innovation, distributing benefits to external entities to a certain extent, and the scope of communication and coordination work involved in innovation has also expanded from the inside of the enterprise to the outside. The above changes are likely to cause internal employees to increase their workload and difficulty of work, the adjustment of benefit distribution policy, and other reasons which lead to negative emotions. Consistency culture, through a common vision emphasizes interpersonal harmony, is conducive to the formation of organizational citizenship behavior among internal members and provides cohesion and execution for actively participating in external collaboration related activities. It is specifically reflected in the common vision, which makes each employee’s work motivation compatible with the enterprise’s goals, so that all members understand the vision and work hard for it, and improves the overall execution ability of the organization; at the same time, the consistency culture emphasizes rule-oriented behavior and establishes a systematic enterprise. The system standardizes enterprise management, constrains employee behavior to follow the strategic direction of the enterprise, and supports external collaboration. Hence the hypothesis.

H2: 

Organizational ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on external collaboration.

3.3. The Influence of Organizational Ambidextrous Culture on Internal Collaboration

To adapt to complex changes in the market environment, enterprises not only need to emphasize collaboration with external entities in the process of service innovation but also systematically integrate the internal creative practices of enterprises. Costanza mentioned that organizations with adaptive culture should implement internal collaborative action plans, supporting cross-departmental collaboration to develop solutions. The specific performance is that adaptive culture requires enterprises to focus on customers, capture market opportunities, and quickly carry out internal reconstruction to adapt to changing needs. However, high-value services that meet new customer needs place new requirements for enterprise resources and processing methods. It is necessary to integrate and coordinate the resources of various departments, break the original resource structure for reorganization and allocation, and create new resource combinations; enterprises with adaptive culture encourage employees’ innovation and change, and support for advanced action and risk-taking reflects a dynamic capability of the organization, which drives the company to improve its own flexibility and make adaptive adjustments in strategy and organizational structure according to changes in the environment, market, and resources to form an internal collaboration model to provide capacity support, thereby optimizing internal processes and speeding up innovation. Organizational learning encourages members to continue to develop their personal capabilities, and the organization provides learning and growth opportunities for them. To strengthen the full use of existing knowledge and experience, various functional departments’ mutual collaboration through information sharing accelerates the flow of knowledge among departments, facilitates further integration of existing knowledge and creation of new knowledge, and improves the efficiency and effectiveness of internal collaboration within the organization.

Consistency culture guides the organization to focus on the stability and efficiency of internal operations and encourages mutual collaboration among functional departments. It emphasizes a common vision that embodies the shared values and goals of all members, which can stimulate organizational cohesion; the maintenance of interpersonal harmony in the consistency culture not only emphasizes the internal cooperation of the organization but also encourages mutual sharing and understanding among employees. Employees can avoid confrontation and conflicts caused by different conceptions and preferences based on individual cognitive differences and establish harmonious interpersonal relationships to promote the smooth development of internal collaboration. Hence the hypothesis.

H3: 

Organizational ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on internal collaboration.

3.4. The Impact of External Collaboration on Service Innovation Performance

External collaboration is an important means to strengthen organizational value-creation activities and enhance competitive advantage. In the service ecosystem, the focal enterprise collaborates with various partners to carry out resource integration and service exchange, thereby promoting the service innovation of the focal enterprise and the realization of multi-subject value co-creation. The specific performance is an important relationship governance mechanism, and mutual trust in external collaboration plays a role in promoting the service innovation performance generated by collaboration. Trust among enterprises can deepen relationship commitment and cooperation satisfaction, reduce the possibility of opportunistic and uncertain behaviors, and provide a more convenient environment for knowledge integration and innovation activities; the joint investment of various subjects in the collaboration process can enable enterprises to obtain the supplementary assets needed to transform innovative projects into commercial success, share the company’s own innovation investment, and reduce the risk of innovation failure. Jointly invested resources form dedicated assets, which will further promote a stable cooperative relationship among collaborating partners; enterprises obtain external resources through collaboration and promote the integration of new resources and existing resources, such as explicit and tacit knowledge jointly promoted by collaborating partners’ knowledge transfer, providing richer technical and customer knowledge for service innovation. The integration of resources included in external collaboration will help focus companies create better resource combinations and improve the market competitiveness of new services. Hence the hypothesis.

H4: 

External collaboration has a positive impact on service innovation performance.

3.5. The Impact of Internal Collaboration on Service Innovation Performance

The importance of collaboration within an enterprise to service innovation has been widely recognized. High-quality interaction and coordination between R&D, production, marketing, and other functions increases creativity, reduces costs, and accelerates development cycles. The innovation tasks of the organization are jointly undertaken by R&D, production, marketing, and other functional departments. Internal collaboration can avoid potential problems and improve the efficiency of internal innovation while giving full play to the functions of each department. The specific manifestations are as follows: firstly, based on the same goal, internal collaboration unites all functional departments into a community of interests, promotes efficient communication and resource sharing, and is conducive to innovating existing services, thereby improving service innovation performance; secondly, in the process of cross-functional collaboration among them, by specifying the division of responsibilities, distribution of benefits, and assumption of risks, it is helpful to realize an efficient collaboration model of shared responsibilities. By implementing this sharing mechanism, departments can prevent the exploitation of each other’s weaknesses for personal gain, reduce competition for limited resources, and eliminate buck-passing. This mechanism can also encourage responsible conduct and promote merit-based competition, which helps to improve the efficiency of internal collaboration, accelerate the innovation process, and enhance the performance of service innovation. Finally, the enterprise redesigns the organizational structure to link various functional departments together and promotes the “physical change” of scattered resources. Reset and “chemical change” resource reorganization use and combine resources in new ways to improve the utilization rate of internal resources, form a combination of advantageous resources to support continuous innovation of enterprises, and further improve innovation performance. Hence the hypothesis.

H5: 

Internal collaboration has a positive impact on service innovation performance.

3.6. The Mediating Role of External Collaboration and Internal Collaboration

Because the cultural orientation of an organization is closely related to management behavior, a specific organizational culture is regarded by scholars as a key element of organizational success. An enterprise that aims to improve service innovation performance should have a distinct and easily identifiable organizational culture to play a guiding and supporting role. Organizational culture includes values, spiritual beliefs, and behavioral norms recognized and followed by organizational members, which can guide organizational members’ thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors, thereby affecting organizational performance. In the service innovation scenario, there should be an intermediate variable between ambidextrous culture and enterprise service innovation performance, which can reflect the specific behavioral activities or related capabilities required for innovation in the process of enterprise innovation.

Resources are one of the key factors that determine the success of enterprise innovation. Enterprises build a collaborative organizational structure, use external collaboration to integrate more heterogeneous resources and use internal collaboration to restructure the existing resources of the enterprise, thereby providing a strong resource base for service innovation. Therefore, the path of culture’s effect on performance partly depends on specific collaborative innovation activities. Service innovation activities require enterprises to integrate, construct and reconfigure internal and external resources to adapt to the rapidly changing environment, and one of the manifestations of this dynamic capability is collaboration capability. As the micro-foundation of dynamic capabilities, organizational culture can cultivate corporate collaboration capabilities and create excellent performance. From the above analysis, ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on both collaboration and service innovation performance, and the two collaborations also help to improve service innovation performance. Hence the hypothesis.

H6: 

External collaboration plays a mediating role in the impact of organizational ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance.

H7: 

Internal collaboration plays a mediating role in the impact of organizational ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance.

3.7. The Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty

Environmental uncertainty emphasizes that the service innovation process of enterprises is in a continuously changing and unpredictable market environment. Enterprises will face many unstructured problems. Uncertainty in demand and technology will prompt the value and role of original customers and technical knowledge to change. Environmental changes rapidly become obsolete or depreciate. In some studies on dynamic capabilities, environmental uncertainty is regarded as a favorable factor that can bring innovation opportunities to enterprises. An ambidextrous culture can help enterprises better face and adapt to environmental changes. Frequent and fierce competition in the market can restrain the inertia of enterprises and make them seek their own survival. When every opportunity comes, the consistent culture drives the enterprise to efficiently integrate the internal creative practice results, and then accelerate the integration efficiency to improve the speed of new service development and seize new market opportunities in the competitive environment. Ambidextrous culture cultivates market adaptability and internal consistency for enterprises, makes up for the high investment in service innovation, and realizes innovation performance with the help of environmental uncertainty.

According to research findings, the influencing factors of service innovation performance have always been the focus of attention in the field of innovation management. Scholars have explored how the organizational elements of enterprises can empower innovation activities in a dynamically changing market environment. In addition to internal elements of the organization, the external environment will also influence organizational behavior, and then have a positive or negative effect on service innovation performance. This paper believes that environmental uncertainty refers to the fact that the external environment of the enterprise is constantly changing and difficult to predict, resulting in significant impacts on the organization’s business activities, specifically manifested in dynamic changes and factors that cannot be perceived in advance, such as the organization’s external technology, customer demand, and market competition. This paper refers to the definition of environmental uncertainty by Kohli and Jaworsk, comprehensively examines demand uncertainty, technical uncertainty and market intensity, and then measures environmental uncertainty. Hence the hypothesis.

H8. 

Environmental uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between organizational ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance.

Collaboration capability is an important embodiment of dynamic capability, and collaboration structure can help enterprises form dynamic innovation capability, thereby improving service innovation performance. When the environment is relatively stable, enterprises face more clear and definite problems, which can be solved by using the original templated knowledge and processes and by having lower requirements for the dynamic innovation capabilities endowed by collaboration. The effect of collaboration may not be obvious. However, in today’s rapidly changing business landscape, companies must be able to swiftly adapt to seize opportunities and navigate potential threats. Collaboration has become increasingly valuable as it allows for the integration of diverse resources, fosters innovative ideas, streamlines processes, and ensures high performance in service innovation.

During external collaborations, enterprises often work with industry competitors as well as upstream and downstream partners. However, in highly uncertain environments, competition can be both fierce and frequent, presenting not only threats from existing competitors but also potential conflicts of interest with other enterprises. Establishing a benefit-sharing collaboration network with these companies can turn competitive threats into cooperative advantages. Although environmental uncertainty will increase the possibility of conflicts between the enterprise and other subjects, leading to an increase in coordination costs, the collaborative relationship established based on trust and institutions can reduce the cost of supervision through positive psychological expectations of the behavior of the collaborating subject, thereby effectively alleviating the cost pressure brought by environmental uncertainty on enterprise collaborative innovation, transforming competition into cooperation, and using the integration advantages formed by the external collaboration to create innovative services that match market opportunities.

Internal collaboration can enable enterprises to optimize operational processes, improve the efficiency of existing resources, and the speed of innovation. Dramatic changes in technology, market preferences, and increasing pressure from competitors can unleash the potential for cross-functional collaboration across organizations. Gemser pointed out in the study that when a company pursues an opportunity characterized by high technology and high market risk, promoting a high level of cross-functional cooperation can increase the success rate of new product innovation. Due to the high environmental uncertainty, the tasks assigned to each functional department are more challenging, requiring more reliance on the information and knowledge of other functional experts to form a creative solution. Therefore, as the environmental uncertainty increases, the value brought by the internal collaboration of enterprises will be more abundant. Therefore, the following assumptions are made.

H9: 

Environmental uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between external collaboration and service innovation performance.

H10: 

Environmental uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between internal collaboration and service innovation performance.

Based on the above analysis, the theoretical model constructed in this paper is shown in Figure 1.

4. Research Design and Data Analysis

4.1. Research Design and Data Collection

In this paper, the survey method is used to collect data, and the proposed theoretical model is empirically tested. Based on the induction and summary of relevant research results, an initial questionnaire is formed for the core concepts in the theoretical model. This paper takes manufacturing servitization as the background to study the impact of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance. According to the purpose of the research, the questionnaire in this paper is divided into the survey part of the basic information of the subjects and the main part of the questionnaire. In order to ensure that the respondents fit the research background of manufacturing enterprise service innovation, firstly confirm whether the manufacturing enterprises to which the object belongs are in the stage of service-oriented transformation or have completed the service-oriented transformation, and at the same time investigate the positions of the subjects to ensure that they, as managers, have a great understanding of corporate culture and organization. The level of cognition in terms of structure and other aspects is sufficient to support filling out this questionnaire, and at the same time investigate the sub-sectors of the manufacturing company to ensure the rationality of the distribution of participants. The remainder of the survey included the nature of the business’s ownership, how long it had been in business, and the number of external collaborators involved in creating the solution. Among them, the nature of enterprise ownership is divided into state-owned enterprises, foreign-funded enterprises, private enterprises, and joint ventures; the operating period is divided into four intervals: less than 5 years, 5–10 years, 10–30 years, and more than 30 years; in the process of creating solutions, the number of external collaboration partners involved in is divided into four ranges: 0, less than 3, 3–5, and more than 5. The main part of the questionnaire includes adaptive culture, consistency culture, external collaboration, internal collaboration, environmental uncertainty, and a service innovation performance scale, and the seven-point Likert scoring method is used to measure the items.

In this paper, online electronic questionnaires were used to collect data. The survey respondents are selected from the management members of manufacturing enterprises. On the one hand, by contacting the management employees who work in the manufacturing company, the questionnaires are distributed through snowballing; during the process of forwarding the questionnaire, the subjects are prompted to forward the questionnaire to managers outside the company who meet the requirements to avoid more than two subjects from the same company, which will affect the research results. Then, respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaire. In the end, a total of 323 questionnaires were collected. A total of 47 questionnaires were eliminated for those who selected “No” on the item “Is your company in the stage of service-oriented transformation/has completed the service-oriented transformation” and other invalid questionnaires, and finally, there were 276 valid questionnaires obtained, and the effective recovery rate was 85.45%. Recruiting a large number of respondents is often challenging in organizational research. MacCallum and Theodoros suggested that 100–200 cases are adequate in confirmatory factor analysis when, first, multiple indicators define a factor; second, indicators have loadings >0.7; and third, communalities are about 0.5 (ideally > 0.6 or >0.7 on average) [70,71]. In this research, each variable has 5–6 indicators, all indicators have loadings greater than 0.7 except for one, and the communalities of these indicators are greater than 0.7. Therefore, we believe that the samples have strong statistical power.

4.2. Data Analysis

Through the analysis of the 276 valid data collected, SPSS software version 23.0 (SPSS 23.0) was used to conduct descriptive statistical analysis on the sample characteristic variables involved in this article, including the position of the subject and the subdivision industry of the manufacturing company, the nature of ownership, the number of years of operation, and the number of external collaborators.

From the analysis results, it can be concluded that from the perspective of the positions of the surveyed objects, grassroots managers are the main ones. There are 155 grassroots managers, accounting for 56.2% of the survey objects, 87 middle managers, accounting for 31.5%, and 34 senior managers, accounting for 31.5%. Compared with 12.3%, the proportion of senior managers included in the survey objects is relatively small, mainly due to the limitation of research capabilities and the distribution characteristics of the number of managers. The investigators have more contact with grassroots and middle managers. From the perspective of the industry, the distribution is relatively uniform; from the perspective of the nature of enterprise ownership, private enterprises are the main ones, accounting for 52.5% of the survey objects, followed by state-owned enterprises accounting for 28.6%; the proportion of enterprises is the largest, accounting for 45.7%. The second place is enterprises with 10–30 years of operation, accounting for 23.9%, while mature enterprises with an operation period of more than 30 years account for 20.3%. In terms of the number of external collaborating partners in the process of creating solutions, more than 70.7% of enterprises have more than three collaborating partners, and only 1.1% of enterprises do not cooperate with any external collaborating partners during the creation of solutions. It can be seen initially that manufacturing companies’ servitization generally relies on external collaboration partners.

4.2.1. Reliability Analysis of the Questionnaire

In this paper, SPSS 23.0 statistical analysis software is used to test the reliability of the questionnaire scale in the formal survey, and Cronbach’s α coefficient method is used to test the internal consistency of the scale in the formal questionnaire. The test standard is the same as the pre-test. The output results of the reliability analysis of each variable are shown in

Table 1. The reliability test of variables.

Variable	Number of Items	Cronbach’s α Value
Adaptive Culture	6	0.901
Consistency Culture	6	0.893
External Collaboration	6	0.909
Internal Collaboration	6	0.906
Environmental Uncertainty	6	0.931
Service Innovation Performance	5	0.929
Total Number of Questionnaires	35	0.943

. The Cronbach’s α coefficient of each variable measurement scale is greater than 0.7, and the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the overall questionnaire is 0.943. The reliability of the table is high. Therefore, the reliability of the scale in this paper has passed the test, and all items can be retained.

4.2.2. Validity Analysis of Formal Questionnaire

First, this paper forms a pre-test questionnaire based on the research background and the characteristics of the survey objects and forms the formal survey questionnaire of this paper based on the feedback of the statistical results of the pre-test. Experts and scholars in related research fields were also invited to evaluate the formal questionnaire. They all believed that the questionnaire in this paper was logically designed and accurately expressed and could reflect the core meaning of variables. Therefore, the formal questionnaire has good content validity.

The test of the construct validity of the scale includes two parts: convergent validity test and discriminant validity test. In this paper, AMOS software version 23.0 statistical analysis software was used to establish a structural equation modeling, and the structural effect of the scale in the formal questionnaire was tested by confirmatory factor analysis. First, judge the degree of fit between the theoretical model and the survey data, then estimate the parameters of the factors, refer to the structural equation modeling output results, and evaluate the convergent validity and discriminant validity of the questionnaire. The academically recognized criterion for construct validity is the standardized factor loading coefficient of each item of the scale is at least greater than 0.5, preferably greater than 0.7, the AVE value of each factor is greater than 0.5, and the CR value is greater than 0.7, indicating that the scale has a good convergent validity; when the square root of the AVE value of a certain variable is greater than its correlation coefficient with other variables, it indicates that the scale has better discriminant validity.

In this paper, the standard and results of the goodness of fit of the structural equation model obtained by the confirmatory factor analysis are as follows: the value of X²/df is 1.365, the value of RMSEA is 0.036, the value of CFI is 0.971, the value of NFI is 0.901, the value of TLI is 0.969, the value of IFI is 0.972, and the value of AGIF is 0.852, which all meet the standard. The value of GFI is 0.872, which is slightly less than 0.9. According to Hair’s [72] research, although it has not reached the standard of greater than 0.9, it is still in the range of an acceptable level. Therefore, it can be judged that each fitting index in the structural equation model meets the standard. Therefore, this paper believes that the follow-up validity analysis also has high accuracy. Convergent data analysis and good fitting indicators have demonstrated that the sample size is appropriate and the data quality is high.

The results of the confirmatory factor analysis on adaptive culture, consistency culture, external collaboration, internal collaboration, environmental uncertainty, and service innovation performance are shown in

Table 2. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis.

Variable	Questionnaire Items	Loading Factor	AVE	CR
Adaptive Culture	The company always place customers interest first	0.791	0.609	0.903
	The company emphasizes making corresponding changes based on customer opinions and suggestions	0.707
	The company focuses on providing opportunities for employees to learn and grow	0.846
	The company encourages employee’s continuous development	0.812
	The company encourages innovation and risk taking	0.781
	The company is constantly innovating and improving the way you work	0.736
Consistency Culture	The company’s employees agree with the organizational vision	0.826	0.584	0.893
	The company’s employees are committed to achieving the organizational vision	0.829
	The company encourages cooperation among employees	0.800
	The company encourages mutual respect and understanding among employees	0.739
	The company emphasizes that internal managers and employees must act in accordance with the rules	0.665
	The company has clear operations rules	0.712
External Collaboration	The company and partners are honest and sincere in the process of collaboration	0.897	0.630	0.910
	The company and partners have strong confidence in each other	0.681
	The company and collaborators have invested a lot of time and manpower in the collaboration	0.852
	The company and collaborators invest heavily in equipment and technology for collaboration	0.846
	The company identifies and acquires resources from partners	0.722
	The company deploys and leverages resources from partners	0.742
Internal Collaboration	All functional departments have the same understanding of the overall goals of the company	0.748	0.622	0.908
	Functions across the company working hard towards one common goal	0.732
	Functions within the company do what they can and help each other	0.850
	Functions across the company are collectively accountable for results	0.849
	The company uses resources differently than before across functions	0.791
	The company combines resources across functions in new ways	0.754
Environmental Uncertainty	The needs and preferences of the company’s customers have changed greatly	0.919	0.703	0.934
	The needs and preferences of the customers change rapidly	0.863
	The industry in which the company operates is subject to rapid technological changes	0.693
	The technological development of the company’s industry is relatively obvious	0.884
	The industry in which the company operates is highly competitive	0.840
	The company has many competitors in the industry	0.814
Service Innovation Performance	Service innovation increases ROI for the company	0.845	0.733	0.932
	Service innovation increases market share for the company	0.889
	Service innovation improves the company’s customer satisfaction	0.879
	Service innovation improves the company’s competitiveness	0.878
	Service innovation promotes the realization of business goals	0.787

. The standardized factor loading coefficients of all items are greater than or close to 0.7, The AVE values of each variable are greater than 0.5, and the CR values are greater than 0.7, meeting the criteria of convergent validity, indicating that the scale has good convergent validity.

The output results of the discriminant validity model are shown in

Table 3. The results of the discriminant validity of the measurement scale.

Variable	Adaptive Culture	Consistency Culture	External Collaboration	Internal Collaboration	Environmental Uncertainty	Service Innovation Performance
Adaptive Culture	0.780
Consistency Culture	0.497 **	0.764
External Collaboration	0.475 **	0.531 **	0.794
Internal Collaboration	0.427 **	0.473 **	0.488 **	0.789
Environmental Uncertainty	0.239 **	0.197 **	0.256 **	0.199 **	0.838
Service Innovation Performance	0.572 **	0.629 **	0.587 **	0.556 **	0.36 8 **	0.856

Note: ** means p < 0.01, the value on the diagonal is the square root of AVE.

. The values on the diagonal of the table are the square roots of the AVE values of each variable, which are greater than the correlation coefficients between each variable and other variables, which shows that the scale used in this paper has good discriminant validity.

The questionnaire in this paper has passed the reliability and validity tests, and it has been verified that the correlation coefficients among the variables involved in the hypothesis are significant. Using the regression analysis method of SPSS 23.0 statistical analysis software, this paper first examines the direct effect between ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance, and the mediating effect of external collaboration and internal collaboration on the impact of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance, including the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty. The method was also used to explore whether the measurement items used can better reflect the corresponding latent variables. Then, structural equation modeling software was used to test the proposed relationship model to confirm the relationship between the main variables in the model.

4.3. Hypothesis Test on the Impact of Ambidextrous Culture on Service Innovation Performance

In this paper, the nature of ownership, operating years, and the number of cooperative partners are used as control variables, and ambidextrous culture is used as an independent variable to study the impact of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance, external collaboration, and internal collaboration. The results of multiple regression analyses are shown in Table 1, and the VIF values are all less than 10, indicating that there is no collinearity problem. The standardized regression coefficient of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance is 0.525 and passed the hypothesis test with a significance level of 0.001, indicating that ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on service innovation performance. Therefore, assumption H1 holds. The standardized regression coefficient of ambidextrous culture on external collaboration is 0.458, and it has passed the hypothesis test with a significance level of 0.001, indicating that ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on external collaboration. Therefore, hypothesis H2 holds. The standardized regression coefficient of ambidextrous culture on internal collaboration is 0.405, and it has passed the hypothesis test with a significance level of 0.001, indicating that ambidextrous culture has a positive impact on internal collaboration. Therefore, hypothesis H3 holds.

In addition, this paper takes the nature of ownership, operating years, and the number of collaborating partners as control variables and internal and external collaboration as independent variables separately to study the impact of external collaboration on service innovation performance. The results of multiple regression analysis are shown in

Table 4. Regression result analysis.

Hypothesis (Independent Variable → Dependent Variable)	t	Significance	VIF	Conclusion
Ambidextrous Culture → Service Innovation Performance	10.350	0.000	1.202	Positive
Ambidextrous Culture → External Collaboration	8.287	0.000	1.202	Positive
Ambidextrous Culture → Internal Collaboration	7.140	0.000	1.202	Positive
External Collaboration → Service Innovation Performance	9.834	0.000	1.156	Positive
Internal Collaboration → Service Innovation Performance	8.919	0.000	1.161	Positive

, and the VIF values are all less than 10, indicating that there is no collinearity problem. The standardized regression coefficients of internal and external collaboration on service innovation performance are 0.462 and 0.496, and it has passed the hypothesis test with a significance level of 0.001, indicating that external collaboration has a positive impact on service innovation performance. Therefore, hypotheses H4 and H5 hold.

4.4. Hypothesis Testing of Mediating Effect

This paper uses the PROCESS plug-in in SPSS 23.0 to test the structural model of the mediation effect. According to Hayes’ suggestion, using PROCESS’s model 4, the sample size of Bootstrap is set to 5000, and the confidence interval is 95%. The process of testing the mediation effect is as follows: first, judge whether the mediation effect is significant according to whether the indirect effect includes 0 in the 95% confidence interval. If the confidence interval does not include 0, it means that the mediation effect exists. Then, under the premise that the mediation effect exists, it is judged whether the mediation effect is a partial mediation effect or a complete mediation effect according to whether the direct effect includes 0 in the 95% confidence interval. If the confidence interval does not contain 0, it is described as the partial mediating effect and if the confidence interval contains 0, it is a complete mediating effect. Finally, the size of the mediating effect is obtained by calculating the proportion of indirect effects in the total effect.

External collaboration and internal collaboration are used as mediating variables in the relationship between ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance, and the test results of their intermediary effects are shown in

Table 5. The result of the mediating effect test.

Hypothesis	Effect Type	Effects	BootSE	Bootstrap 95% CIs		Effect Ratio
				Lower	Upper
	Total Effect	0.0430	0.0041	0.0342	0.0503
	Direct Effect	0.0250	0.0043	0.0166	0.0334	58.14%
H6	Mediation Effect (Ambidextrous Cultural→ External Collaboration → Service Innovation Performance)	0.0097	0.0039	0.0034	0.0187	22.56%
H7	Mediation Effect (Ambidextrous Cultural→ Internal Collaboration → Service Innovation Performance)	0.0075	0.0032	0.0025	0.0148	17.44%

. According to the criteria, it can be concluded that external collaboration partially mediates the impact of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance, and internal collaboration also partially mediates the impact of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance, of which the mediating effect of external collaboration accounts for 22.56% of the total effect and the mediating effect of internal collaboration accounts for 17.44% of the total effect. Therefore, hypotheses H6 and H7 hold.

4.5. Hypothesis Testing of Moderating Effect

To test the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance, external collaboration and service innovation performance, and internal collaboration and service innovation performance, considering that the above variables are all continuous variables, the test method is suitable to use the product hierarchical regression analysis which was performed on the regression model of the item. To sum up, this paper uses SPSS 23.0 statistical analysis software to conduct hierarchical regression analysis to test the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty.

4.5.1. Examination Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on the Relationship between Ambidextrous Culture and Service Innovation Performance

Using SPSS 23.0 statistical analysis software for hierarchical regression analysis, the test results of the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance are shown in

Table 6. The result of moderating effect test 1.

Steps	Effect Type	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
		Beta	VIF	Beta	VIF	Beta	VIF
Step 1	Nature of Ownership	0.140	1.061	0.065	1.092	0.066	1.093
	Operation Years	−0.347 ***	1.080	−0.155 **	1.222	−0.139 **	1.247
	Partner Quantities	0.215 ***	1.019	0.135 **	1.042	0.133 **	1.043
Step 2	Ambidextrous Culture			0.486 ***	1.226	0.485 ***	1.226
	Environmental Uncertainty			0.257 ***	1.041	0.257 ***	1.041
Step 3	Ambidextrous Culture * Environmental Uncertainty					0.096 *	1.025
	F Variation	21.248 ***		76.482 ***		4.774 *
	Adjusted R2	0.181		0.473		0.481

Dependent Variable: Service Innovation Performance. Note: *** means p < 0.001, ** means p < 0.01, * means p < 0.05.

. The VIF values of each model are all less than 10, indicating that there is no collinearity problem. The adjusted R² of model 3 is 0.481, which is greater than the adjusted R² value of model 2 of 0.473, indicating that after introducing the interaction term of ambidextrous culture and environmental uncertainty, the explanatory power of the model increases by 0.8%, which is significant at the level of p < 0.05. At the same time, the regression coefficient of the interaction item is 0.096, which is significant at the level of p < 0.05, indicating that environmental uncertainty has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between ambidextrous culture and service innovation performance, and hypothesis H8 is established.

4.5.2. Examination Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on the Relationship between External Collaboration and Service Innovation Performance

Using SPSS 23.0 statistical analysis software for hierarchical regression analysis, the test results of the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between external collaboration and service innovation performance are shown in

Table 7. The result of moderating effect test 2.

Steps	Effect Type	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
		Beta	VIF	Beta	VIF	Beta	VIF
Step 1	Nature of Ownership	0.140	1.061	0.097	1.074	0.095	1.076
	Operation Years	−0.347 ***	1.080	−0.203 ***	1.166	−0.207 ***	1.183
	Partner Quantities	0.215 ***	1.019	0.086	1.086	0.086	1.086
Step 2	External Collaboration			0.442 ***	1.218	0.447 ***	1.236
	Environmental Uncertainty			0.227 ***	1.075	0.228 ***	1.077
Step 3	External Collaboration * Environmental Uncertainty					−0.032	1.048
	F Variation	21.248 ***		64.108 ***		0.487
	Adjusted R2	0.181		0.441		0.439

Dependent Variable: Service Innovation Performance. Note: *** means p < 0.001, * means p < 0.05.

. It can be seen from the table that the VIF values of each model are less than 10, indicating that there is no collinearity problem. The adjusted R² of model 3 is 0.439, which is greater than the adjusted R² value of model 2 of 0.441, indicating that after introducing the interaction term of external collaboration and environmental uncertainty, the explanatory power of the model is reduced by 0.2%. At the same time, the regression coefficient of the interaction item is −0.032, which does not reach the significance level, indicating that environmental uncertainty has no moderating effect on the relationship between external collaboration and service innovation performance, and hypothesis H9 is not established.

4.5.3. Examination Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on the Relationship between Internal Collaboration and Service Innovation Performance

Using SPSS 23.0 statistical analysis software for hierarchical regression analysis, the test results of the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between internal collaboration and service innovation performance are shown in

Table 8. The result of moderating effect test 3.

Steps	Effect Type	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
		Beta	VIF	Beta	VIF	Beta	VIF
Step 1	Nature of Ownership	0.140	1.061	0.120	1.064	0.119	1.064
	Operation Years	−0.347 ***	1.080	−0.176 **	1.220	−0.151 **	1.273
	Partner Quantities	0.215 ***	1.019	0.126 **	1.052	0.124 **	1.052
Step 2	Internal Collaboration			0.417 ***	1.194	0.389 ***	1.261
	Environmental Uncertainty			0.255 ***	1.050	0.234 ***	1.087
Step 3	Internal Collaboration * Environmental Uncertainty					0.119*	1.229
	F Variation	21.248 ***		41.663 ***		5.635 *
	Adjusted R2	0.181		0.425		0.435

Dependent Variable: Service Innovation Performance. Note: *** means p < 0.001, ** means p < 0.01, * means p < 0.05.

. The VIF values of each model are less than 10, and there is no collinearity problem. The adjusted R² of model 3 is 0.435, which is greater than the adjusted R² value of model 2 of 0.425, indicating that after introducing the interaction term of internal collaboration and environmental uncertainty, the explanatory power of the model increases by 1.0%, which is significant at the p < 0.05 level. At the same time, the regression coefficient of the interaction item is 0.119, which is significant at the level of p < 0.05, indicating that environmental uncertainty has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between internal collaboration and service innovation performance. Hypothesis H10 is established.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

In the process of transforming from product innovation to service innovation, manufacturing enterprises need to adjust and change organizational elements such as organizational culture and organizational structure. Based on the situational ambidexterity theory and cultural traits model, this paper defines the specific connotation of organizational ambidextrous culture, analyzes the relationship between organizational ambidextrous culture and external collaboration, internal collaboration, and service innovation performance, and analyzes the impact of environmental uncertainty on the moderating effect of the above relationship.

When evaluating the impact of organizational culture on service innovation, most of the current literature considers it from a single cultural perspective [73,74,75]. It is evident that assessing the different single-factor effects of these impacts is crucial for advancing service innovation. However, this is far from enough to make informed decisions and develop strategies that promote service innovation. It is essential to consider the wider implications and ensure that they are properly evaluated to drive positive change and progress. Manufacturing companies often encounter both internal and external challenges that must be addressed concurrently [5,76]. An ambidextrous culture is better suited for this scenario, as it encompasses both internal integration and external adaptability traits, enabling a more comprehensive solution for service innovation [10]. This research explores an area that has been overlooked in the previous literature and can offer more exhaustive guidance for enterprise management. Additionally, how organizational culture has been manifested on a micro level was stated in many ways, but there has been a lack of discussion from a collaboration perspective, specifically under the circumstances that most of the literature has vaguely defined cooperation and collaboration [77,78]. This paper has clearly defined collaboration and divided it into internal collaboration and external collaboration. The testing result also verifies and reinforces the positive impact of internal and external collaboration on service innovation, which will provide more insights into the enterprise development. Moreover, environmental uncertainty, which is a critical factor in impacting service innovation [79,80], as a moderating variable, has been barely brought into the discussion. In such a dynamic and competitive market, environmental uncertainty can no longer be neglected, and this paper has filled this lacuna, which will provide a more constructive indication for improving service innovation.

The questionnaire survey method was used to collect data to carry out an empirical test on the relevant hypotheses. The theoretical significance and practical implications of this paper are as follows.

5.1. Theoretical Implications

Exploring the influencing factors of service innovation performance is an important topic in the field of manufacturing servitization. Many scholars have studied how organizational culture and structure impact service innovation, as they are important elements of an organization, but most studies focus on the relationship between single culture and organizational innovation, or explore the impact of internal or external collaboration organizational structure forms on service innovation in isolation; few attempts have been made to reveal the connotation and performance of culture in cultivating internal integration and external adaptability of the organization from an ambidextrous perspective, and comprehensively examine the relationship between internal collaboration and external collaboration. Internal collaboration acts on the complete logic of innovation performance. This paper conducts research on the related issues of service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises, and its theoretical significance is as follows.

First, it enriches the ambidextrous theory of organization. With the transformation of organizational ambidexterity from structural ambidexterity to situational ambidexterity, the concept of ambidextrous culture has begun to receive attention in the field of organizational management. The research on this emerging concept has just started, and there is room for exploration in the definition of its connotation and the development of measurement tools. This paper combines the theory of situational ambidexterity and cultural traits, connects the unique cultural attributes of Chinese enterprises, deeply analyzes the concept of ambidextrous culture, and reconstructs the connotation of ambidextrous culture from two aspects of adaptive culture and consistent culture. Unlike most of the literature, which discusses ambidextrous culture elements separately or focuses solely on balance or complementarity, this paper believes that ambidextrous culture is composed of adaptive culture and consistency culture simultaneously and there is a balance and complementarity in between. It is helpful to promote the enrichment of organizational ambidexterity theory and at the same time provide a reference for the follow-up research on ambidextrous culture.

Second, this paper reveals the mechanism of ambidextrous culture. When discussing the influencing factors of the service innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises in the existing literature, the theoretical perspective adopted is broad, and the intermediate mechanism is rarely explored in depth. Based on the theory of dynamic capabilities and the logic of service dominance, this paper analyzes organizational culture as the micro-foundation of dynamic capabilities, analyzes the effect of ambidextrous culture on organizational collaboration, the collaborative advantages formed by organizational structure adjustments on service innovation performance, and divides organizational structures into internal collaboration and internal collaboration. External parties’ collaboration and their impact on service innovation performance are also discussed, which will offer stronger support for future research.

Third, this paper explores the situational factors that cause organizational ambidextrous culture to affect service innovation performance. When exploring the influencing factors of service innovation performance, this paper not only pays attention to the internal situational elements of the enterprise, but also considers the external environmental conditions, and explains the impact path of environmental uncertainty on the service innovation process. On the one hand, under the threat of environmental uncertainty, enterprises passively adjust organizational elements to cultivate dynamic capabilities and adapt to the external market; on the other hand, although the external environment itself is uncontrollable, enterprises after adjusting organizational elements can actively grasp the opportunities brought by certainty, use innovation of the environment to improve innovation performance, and provide more solid theoretical support for the service-oriented transformation of manufacturing enterprises.

5.2. Practical Implications

Facing the rapid development of modern information technology, manufacturing enterprises are faced with complex and changeable real environments such as dynamically changing market demands and increasingly fierce competition activities. It has become an effective way for manufacturing enterprises to gain competitive advantages by means of organizational transformation to improve performance. This paper argues that the level of environmental uncertainty can change the impact of ambidextrous culture, external collaboration, and internal collaboration. The research of this paper provides the following enlightenment for my country’s manufacturing enterprises to successfully realize service-oriented transformation.

First, this paper clarifies the new direction of organizational culture construction in the process of enterprise service innovation. This paper discusses the impact of ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance and provides direction for enterprises to establish cultural elements such as vision, values, rules, and regulations from two aspects of internal consistency and external consistency of the organization. For example, internally, integrate the internal resources of the organization, establish an organizational culture of inter-departmental collaboration, encourage mutual learning and the concept of innovation and change, cultivate an atmosphere of interpersonal harmony, and drive the behavior of organizational members with a common vision; externally, build customer-oriented and result-oriented organizational goals, which guide the future development of the organization.

Second, it provides new ideas for the adjustment of organizational structure in the process of enterprise service innovation. In this paper, we have examined how internal and external collaboration impacts service innovation performance in enterprises. Our findings highlight the significance of how to improve service innovation performance by establishing a service ecosystem by engaging in external collaboration with other entities and integrating services through service exchange within the system to mitigate external heterogeneity to achieve the goal of multi-subject value co-creation; at the same time, organize internal collaboration to break the boundaries of departments, share resources and make joint decisions among functional departments, realize the restructuring of internal resources and synergistic effects, and provide support for external collaboration.

Third, it points out that environmental uncertainty is an important factor affecting manufacturing enterprises in service innovation. With the development of science and technology and the major changes in the global manufacturing competition, manufacturing companies have to pay attention to external changes in real time. While responding to market and customer needs, enterprises themselves need to flexibly adjust their internal organizational structure at any time through external and internal collaboration, form new organizational units through cross-departmental collaboration, and form new interest alliances with external suppliers and upstream and downstream enterprises; in this way, work efficiency and service innovation can be greatly improved and the uncontrollable external environment and changes in customer needs can also be better managed. This paper once again confirms the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on improving service innovation performance and provides a deeper reference for enterprises to formulate effective strategies.

5.3. Research Limitations and Prospects

There are still some limitations and deficiencies in this paper, which can be improved and perfected in follow-up research. Limited by the research conditions, this paper only uses subjective indicators to measure the service innovation performance of enterprises. Follow-up research can incorporate objective indicators of service innovation performance into the research, and more rigorously explore the impact of organizational ambidextrous culture on service innovation performance and compare subjective indicators. Follow-up research can also incorporate whether there is a difference in objective performance evaluation and analyze the reasons. Second, it can explore the relationship between the various variable dimensions in depth. Due to the limitations of research scope and focus, this paper regards ambidextrous culture as a single-dimensional concept and explores its impact on external collaboration, internal collaboration, and service innovation performance, but does not verify and distinguish adaptive culture and consistent culture from the magnitude and intensity of the contribution to service innovation performance. In future research, this shortcoming can be addressed to avoid the negative impacts of large-scale organizational culture adjustments. thirdly, the moderating effect of other variables is explored. In the follow-up research, variables such as service innovation, collaboration scope, and collaboration institutionalization degree can be incorporated into the model as adjustment variables for research; the fourth is to explore the complementary effects of external collaboration and internal collaboration. Since the research focus of this paper is on ambidextrous culture, the complementary effects of bicultural balance and combination dimensions have been deeply investigated. When exploring the mediation path, only the mediating effects of external collaboration and internal collaboration have been tested separately. In follow-up research, we can further explore the interrelationship between external and internal collaboration.