Servitization strategy as a roadmap for the accounting machine

In the last decades contributions on servitization strategy have investigated the role of accounting in supporting it, highlighting the helpfulness of pragmatic constructivism in better understanding the accounting role. Following this advice, we reinterpret the metaphor of the accounting machine from the perspective of pragmatic constructivism and investigate how the accounting machine is used to prevent the so-called servitization paradox. Moving from the relevance of this paradox, the paper aims to examine how awareness of the servitization strategy could facilitate managers in the use of accounting information, communicating the business consequences of the strategy in decisions related to new product development (NPD) projects, typically characterized by cost and investment levels that are not fixed, leaving more room for preventing the servitization paradox. Accordingly, we conducted an interpretive case study in a division of a multinational manufacturing company operating in the semiconductor industry. The case evidence showed how managers become conscious of the functions and services that customers expect from a new device. More specifically, what emerges is how awareness of the servitization strategy helped managers in the use of accounting information throughout the NPD project’s maturity stages, characterized by different degrees of uncertainty. An actor perspective of uncertainty was followed in re-interpreting the different accounting machine that emerged from the evidence. All the evidence of the three NPD stages was interpreted as a process of co-authoring proactive and pragmatic truth.