A Knowledge-Based Framework for Service Management

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how information and communication technologies are used for service standardisation, customization, and modularization by knowledge intensive service firms through the development and empirically validation of a knowledge-based framework. This paper uses 59 in-depth interviews, observational data, and document analysis from case studies of three service related departments in high-technology, multinational KIBSs.Prior research does not conceptualise the relationships between service customisation, standardisation and modularisation. This paper seeks to overcome this gap by integrating insights from research on the role played by both knowledge and ICTs to construct and validate a framework to deal with this gap. It outlines the implications for service firms use of ICT to deal with increasing knowledge intensity as well as indicating the circumstances under which service knowledge is best customised, standardised and modularised. Further testing in other industries would prove useful in extending the usefulness and applicability of the findings.The originality of the paper lies in developing and validating the first framework to outline the relationship between how service knowledge is customised, standardised or modularised and indicating the associated issues and challenges. It emphasises the role of knowledge and technology. The value of this framework increases as more firms deal with increasing knowledge intensity in the services they provide and in their use of ICTs to reap the benefits of appropriate knowledge re-use.

Towards identifying knowledge bases in KIBS through their service development process

“…Analysing the firm’s processes from the resource-based point of view, researchers stress the importance of intellectual resources in the firm’s ability to develop and execute an effective SD process (Froehle and Roth, 2007; Santos and Spring, 2013). As internal processes of knowledge creation and development are noted to be less formalised (Jokela et al , 2014; Walsh and O’Brien, 2017), to manage knowledge in an efficient way tacit knowledge should be converted into a format that makes it possible “to be stored and transferred as information” (Johnson et al , 2000).…”

“…Companies applying certain iterative formalisation processes like productisation (Toivonen and Tuominen, 2009), standardisation and modularisation (Walsh and O’Brien, 2017) are considered more effective due to SD systematisation (Storey et al , 2016) and time reduction (Walsh and O’Brien, 2017). More studies instead show that different formalisation processes lead to different results in KIBS companies (Consoli and Elche-Hortelano, 2010; Pina and Tether, 2016; Chichkanov et al , 2021).…”