Peter K. Mills

Professional concern: managing knowledge‐based service relationships

Research has shown that managing client participation can add value to the delivery of quality services. While several control mechanisms have been proposed in the literature for the management of complex service relationships, they generally fail to account for two realities of service provider/client relationships ‐‐ information asymmetry and uncertainty. This paper proposes a new mechanism, “professional concern,” and suggests that its various dimensions ‐‐ provider authority, social affiliation, client role accountability and objective attitude ‐‐ provide a framework for managing knowledge‐based service relationships and optimizing decision‐making processes for delivering quality services.

Internal Market Structures Substitutes for Hierarchies

A distinguishing feature of contemporary organizations is the growing number of internal employees providing services to other employees. General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Dell Computer, Cisco, and other firms have enhanced service units and functions within their organizations. Nevertheless, much of what we know about these internal services is inadequate. Moreover, control of these internal services tends to be based erroneously on traditional concepts of hierarchies. Despite the growing importance of internal services, it has been difficult to assess their value or “price.” Without proper consideration of value, goods and services may be offered at less than their appropriate value. This article introduces organizing principles based on internal market structures as an alternative perspective to rethink the impact and control of internal services. The authors also present eight specific propositions that describe the structure, functions, politics, processes, and pricing of internal market structures. Implications are provided for academicians and practicing managers.

The Internal Promotion Of Ideas

This chapter specifically addresses internal marketing of tacit knowledge. Internal marketing is the promotional activities within knowledge services wherein employees work to “sell” knowledge which is “bought” by others.The implementation of internal marketing campaigns for developing value- added solutions within knowledge services is explored. The promotion of component private knowledge within the organization to increase the internal awareness of trading partners and the expansion of human capital assets for the building of knowledge stocks for organization competitive sustainability are presented.

Defining Competitive Advantage in Knowledge Services

This chapter examines the profound and widespread evolutionary transformation of the workplace as the economy shifts from one based on manufacturing to knowledge services. 20 th century managerial approaches for competitiveness are becoming a relic, the result of a broader transformation to knowledge services and the need to focus on the building of tacit knowledge stocks for sustained competitive advantage. The chapter outlines the emerging knowledge based work landscape and the challenges it presents for managers. In this chapter, the “proventure” worker is introduced and the new and complex contract in the relationship between management and worker in the workplace. The nature of knowledge service solutions to customer priorities is presented with the focus on collective cognitization along with the active inclusion of customer as co-creators of value-added solutions. The chapter concludes by highlighting a big-picture framework to provide guidance for managers of knowledge services interested in understanding and improving the performance of their organizations.

Building Advantage: Managing Customer Alliances By Professional Distance

One of the crucial factors in customer alliances is maintaining independence in the generation of value-added service solutions. Much is known about customer relationship management (CRM) but there is a lack of understanding on just how to effectively engage or manage customers in knowledge services. In this chapter, “professional distance” is presented as a relational mechanism for effectively balancing the competing tensions of intimacy and objectivity in customer alliances. Professional distance is critical in knowledge services relationships for maintaining engagement personnel independence and optimizing the alliance. Professional distance discussed in the chapter extends the well known customer relationship management (CRM) which does not adequately address the complex issues in customer alliances.

Building Advantage: Designing The Right Structure For Knowledge Services

It is well recognized that value-added solutions to customer priorities is dependent on knowledge that is scattered throughout the reaches of the organization. However, the issue of how people find out who has exchangeable knowledge worth pursuing, particularly those in possession of tacit knowledge is a major challenge for managers in knowledge services. Traditional 20 th century hierarchies are incapable of addressing this issue. In this chapter, a novel organization architecture, which is termed the “proventure structure”, is presented which is designed to support the location and exchange of knowledge for more effectively generation value-added solutions to customer priorities. The proventure architecture is a new form of organizing and is presented as an investment and exchange forum for the generation of solution and the building of knowledge stocks within the services organization.

Building Knowledge Advantage: Internal Market Imperatives

It is becoming increasingly clear that traditional ways of managing activities within knowledge services organizations are no longer appropriate. In a departure for 20 th century models, this chapter develops an internal market framework for controlling knowledge centers, units and workers engaged in the generation of value-added solutions and knowledge stocks within the organization. In this chapter, market principles are brought into the firm as a nonconventional way of nourishing creativity within knowledge services and as a foundation for managerial control.

Building Advantage: Management By Mistrust In Controlling Empowered Proventure Workers

How can knowledge services direct and control their employees who must be empowered or given the autonomy to generate value-added solutions to customer priorities? This is a pressing question for managers of knowledge services. In this chapter, the conditions for empowerment are discussed, with the notion that the more discretion employees are given the more controls management has to impose for the organization to be effective. One of the radical ideas presented in this chapter is that employees should be managed and controlled by mistrust rather than a reliance on trust in knowledge services which, among other control mechanisms, entails peer control by other workers.

Understanding The Logic Of Knowledge Service Sustainability: Customer Alliances

A central theme in knowledge services is the critical role of customer alliances play in the competitive sustainability of these firms. In this chapter, the focus is on the particular nature of customer alliances and its advantages for reducing the clouding effects of providing services solutions to customers that are of high heterogeneity and intangibility. A classification of customer alliances − problem focused and lateral differentiation − is presented as strategies that are vitality important for developing novel solutions to customer priorities and building knowledge stocks. The distinct strategies are discussed as adaptive mechanism for anticipating customer priorities and the sustained viability of knowledge services.