Knowledge Services Management: Organising Around Internal Markets

Citation

Sigala, M. (2011), "Knowledge Services Management: Organising Around Internal Markets", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 84-84. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610421111108058

More and more economies are immigrating to the knowledge economy, but although a lot has been written and discussed about services management, limited research has focused so far on how knowledge‐based service firms can be effectively managed and organised. The aim of this book is to analyse the fundamentals of designing knowledge service organisations both at an individual staff and organisation‐wide level. To that end, the concepts of “proventure” worker and “proventure” workspace are introduced and analysed by providing theoretical underpinnings as well as examples from several international knowledge services firms. All book chapters are well structured and presented by starting with their learning objectives and aims and finishing with a summary highlighting the major lessons learnt. The book is reader‐friendly (demonstrated in its writing style and language), and its chapters are organised in a logical sequence of arguments.

The book starts with a chapter that introduces the reader to the theme of book by outlining the characteristics of the emerging knowledge‐based work landscape and analysing the concept and features of “proventure” workers. This chapter nicely explains how “proventure” workers represent the cognitization of service labour and how they depend on the customers' engagement in value chain operations for creating value‐added solutions. This chapter is a good start of the book, since it identifies and analyses the major concepts that the remaining chapters elaborate in much more depth.

The second book chapter focuses on the strategies required to manage the customer contributions in knowledge services firms. The book chapter identifies different types of customer alliances and provides several examples of how these can significantly assist in developing novel solutions to customer priorities and building knowledge stocks. The chapter finishes by analysing customer alliances strategies that aim to serve as an adaptive mechanism for anticipating customer priorities and sustaining the viability of knowledge services. Chapter 3 further elaborates the strategies of customer management by introducing and analysing the concept of professional distance. Professional distance is argued as a vital relational mechanism that should be used for effectively balancing the competing tensions of intimacy and objectivity in customer alliances as well as for maintaining engagement personnel independence and optimising customer alliances. The book chapter gives several useful practical examples for numerous firms, as well as nicely expanding the customer relationship management literature, which has not adequately addressed how to effectively engage or manage customers in knowledge services.

Chapter 4 focuses on the organisational aspects of knowledge services firms. This chapter develops an internal market framework for controlling knowledge workers, units, and workers engaged in the generation of value‐added solutions and knowledge stocks within the organisation. The chapter adapts market principles as a non‐conventional way of nourishing creativity within knowledge services and as a foundation for managerial control.

Chapter 5 focuses on the micro‐management of “proventure” workers who must be given autonomy to generate value‐added solutions. This chapter presents a radical idea that employees should be managed and controlled by mistrust rather than a reliance on trust in knowledge services which, amongst other control mechanisms, it entails peer control by other workers. To elaborate its arguments, the chapter analyses the concept of employee empowerment and it advocates that the more discretion employees are given the more controls management has to impose for the organisation to be effective.

Chapter 6 examines the organisational structure of knowledge services firms. The chapter argues that the hierarchical structures of the twentieth century are incapable of enabling knowledge workers to identify and collaborate with co‐workers that posses valuable tacit knowledge within the firm. To that end, the chapter proposes a novel organisational structure titled “proventure structure” (presented as an exchange forum), which is designed to support the location and exchange of knowledge for more effectively generating value‐added solutions for the customer.

The seventh chapter continues the discussion of chapter 6 related to knowledge workers' collaboration by focusing on internal marketing of tacit knowledge. Internal marketing is presented as the promotional activities within knowledge services wherein employees work to “sell” knowledge that is “bought” by others. The chapter provides several strategies that employees can use for increasing the internal awareness of trading partners and expanding the human capital assets for building knowledge stocks.

The book finishes with the concluding chapter 8, which summarises the major arguments and implications presented in the previous chapters. This chapter also identifies directions for future research and challenges to be faced by knowledge services firms.

Overall, this is an easy‐to‐read book that provides a rich set of both theoretical background and industry evidence of the strategies for designing, managing, and controlling the labour as well as the workspace of knowledge services firms. The book nicely integrates theoretical concepts with practical evidence from numerous international firms. Overall, the book provides a good theoretical background on, the so far overlooked area of knowledge services. The book readers would be benefited if they have an already background on the basic principles of services management and corporate strategy, as this book builds and expands on these fields. The book constitutes a useful reading for researchers‐academics, high level students, and professionals involved and interested in the management of knowledge services.