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Investigates the role of the professional in a firm offering professional services aiming to answer the questions of: what marketing activities the professional might use; what proportion of his/her time should be divided into what areas; and how marketing sales and costs might be calculated. Looks at current practices in this area, and attempts to find conceptual frameworks to guide professional service firms in the marketplace.

We explore factors that influence the circulation of client–service firm relationships between firms in the same market for professional services. Circulation refers to the dissolution of a client–service firm market tie and the formation of a new tie involving the same client but a new professional service firm. Building on research in social embeddedness and the structure of markets, we argue that the circulation of client–service firm relationships is affected by three social signals: the mobility of exchange managers between professional service firms, the size and market strategy of professional service firms, and the similarity of new service firms to clients’ previous exchange partners. Using data on advertising agency–client market ties, we find that client ties are more likely to circulate to large agencies, agencies with many market ties, and to agencies that are similar to a client's previous advertising agency. The circulation of client ties is also more likely when new agencies hire exchange managers from a client's previous agency. This effect is stronger when exchange managers circulate to agencies of equal or higher status as their previous employer. We discuss the implications of our findings for social embeddedness research and for the study of professional service firms.

This study investigates whether or not accounting and legal decision-makers at publicly traded US firms exhibit a professional affiliation bias with respect to their selection of business service providers. Executives at NYSE or NASDAQ firms who were affiliated with the accounting profession, the legal profession, or neither profession indicated their likelihood of using one of three randomly assigned types of firms (i.e., a CPA firm, a law firm, or a firm with both CPA and attorney partners) to provide five selected business services. The five business services represent the range of accounting and legal services that firms often outsource: audit, tax representation, mergers and acquisitions, trade regulation/interstate commerce, and litigation. We find that executive level decision-makers at publicly traded US firms do exhibit a professional affiliation bias in the selection of business service providers and that this professional affiliation bias is stronger in attorneys than in CPAs. The fact that all respondents were NYSE or NASDAQ executives, rather than students or another surrogate population, provides additional relevance and generalizability to our findings. Identifying this bias can help executives avoid suboptimal initial selection decisions and/or inaccurate performance evaluations of external business service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to apply concepts from organizational and social identity theories to theoretically consider different ways that professional service providers conceptualize their roles and deliver their knowledge.

The paper is a conceptual discussion to advance the understanding of professional service delivery, within the realm of service‐quality research.

The field has yet to provide a clear understanding of what professional service delivery actually looks like. The paper offers propositions examining the process by which professionals identify with membership in their profession and firms that in turn, influence their expert‐based self‐concepts, the images they form of their clients as recipients of their knowledge, and ways they create the service exchange. The paper also considers the impact of professional and organizational identification on the types of clientele professionals may develop.

The paper adds depth to the understanding of the complex process of expert‐based service delivery. The ideas presented in this paper have implications for research in service‐quality, specifically in understanding how and why professionals approach their client‐interactions.

The ideas presented in this paper would be useful to professional service firms interested in understanding the role their firm's identity plays in ways its professionals conduct their work and the types of clientele they wish to attract.

The paper contributes to the service quality literature through conceptualizing professional service delivery. It represents a step in acknowledging the role of professional delivery in influencing service outcomes and in developing the theoretical rationale as to why different approaches exist.

Professional service organizations are finding themselves increasingly involved with marketing in order to develop and maintain relationships with their clients. Restricted by professional standards, and hindered by a lack of experience, firms are struggling to understand marketing and implement marketing programs. Nowhere is this struggle more evident that in the accounting profession, where firms are regulated by professional standards and guidelines. Based on a series of one‐on‐one interviews with accounting professionals, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants standards and guidelines, and information from both practitioner and academic literature, this research identifies the extent to which firms are following the prescriptive advice. Discussions of initiatives are provided as guidelines for further implementation of marketing strategies in the accounting profession and other professional service firms that are following in the accountants’ footsteps.

Going from the short list to winning the contract is critical to a professional service provider, yet relatively few studies have investigated selection criteria used in this last stage of the selection process. This paper presents a qualitative study that examined the dynamics of the selection process, identified decision criteria which business and organizational clients use when selecting a professional service provider from their short lists, and investigated ways in which client firms assess competing professional service providers on intangible attributes, e.g. personal chemistry. Clients who had recently awarded a contract to a firm in the “built environment” industry (e.g. an architectural and engineering firm) were sampled. Their responses to open‐ended questions provided rich data that revealed factors considered in the selection of a professional service provider in the final presentation/interview stage and yielded insights into nuances of the selection process. Managerial recommendations for getting from the short list to the contract are presented.

This chapter examines the sources of variation in organizational form among accounting and law firms. We first summarize research in the organization of professional service firms and explain its evolution. This is followed by the argument that variations around the P2 archetype have emerged in response to different market and institutional pressures faced by accounting and law firms. Drawing on contingency and institutional theory, we show how the changing balance between the influence of market and institutional factors has resulted in structural variation.

This paper aims to extend the current research on zone of tolerance (ZOT) and its antecedents, to the context of business-to-business (B2B) professional services from both client and service firms’ perspectives, with a modified ZOT framework including five client and service firms attributes as antecedents of desired (DSL) and adequate (ASL) service levels. Prior research on zone of tolerance (ZOT) and its antecedents mostly focuses on business-to-consumer services and customers’ perspective. The authors address these gaps with a modified ZOT framework with five attributes of client and service firms as antecedents of customer expectations, namely, desired service level (DSL) and adequate service level (ASL), for business-to-business (B2B) professional services.

A combination of qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (online survey) research methods with managers of professional audit firms and their clients, using a reduced AUDITQUAL instrument with 39 items and seven dimensions.

Professional firm size and fee premium have a positive effect on DSL; service tenure positively influences both DSL and ASL; client firm size has a negative effect on DSL; both client and service firm sizes positively moderate each other’s influence on the DSL; and DSL positively influences ASL.

The authors study a single B2B professional service (audit) in a single city (Hong Kong) from a single perspective (customers) that may limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research should validate the findings for other B2B professional services in diverse locations and also include service providers’ expectations and perceptions.

Managers in professional service firms should understand the factors influencing different levels of expectations for their customers and develop suitable strategies (e.g. customer education and employee training) to manage these expectations more effectively.

The authors extend current research on customer expectations and ZOT by identifying five unique attributes of professional service and client firms and testing their roles as antecedents of adequate and DSLs using AUDITQUAL instrument.

The aim of this study is to better understand service supply chain management by analysing the professional service supply chain in professional service firms (PSFs) and exploring how the high performance work systems (HPWS) influence professional service supply chain performance. In addition, this study seeks to examine the relationship between professional service supply chain performance and the overall organizational performance.

Analysis of PSF suggests a three‐step of professional service supply chain as the clients' requests, partners forming working teams or so‐called team formation and utilization, and delivering of solutions or services to clients. Based on extensive literature review, the authors hypothesize that HPWS have a positive impact on the professional service supply chain performance and the team formation and utilization mediates the link. They also hypothesize the positive link between the professional service supply chain performance and the overall organisational firm performance. Employing survey method, data was collected from 93 accounting firms at two time points. In May 2010 (Time 1), a survey including questions on HPWS, team formation and utilization and professional service supply chain performance were sent out to the managing partners and HR directors in accounting firms based in Ireland. Around one year later (Time 2), another survey measuring firm performance was sent out. This data allowed the authors to establish causal pattern in their results. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyse data to test hypotheses.

The results indicate the positive link between HPWS and the professional service supply chain performance. The team formation and utilization mediates the above relationship. In addition, professional service supply chain performance was found to be positively linked to the firm performance.

The present study is limited in terms of sample size, single industry and self‐report data. Future research also needs to examine more mediators or moderators – the mechanisms through which HPWS work on the professional service supply chain.

Firms using higher level of HPWS experience better professional service supply chain performance. Human resource management practices that promote employees' ability, motivation and opportunities which allow teams to be formed more effectively to work with clients enhance organizational performance and higher profit levels. Managers able to effectively adopt and implement these teamwork‐based HR practices and encourage and support employees' collaboration through such practices enhance the firm's professional service supply chain effectiveness and its organisational performance.

The authors' study focuses on the service supply chain management operations within the professional service firms. In doing so, their research answers the call by Ellram et al. for more supply chain management research with respect to the service sector. It addresses a significant research gap identified by Rahman and Wu, namely, “relatively little attention has been given to the service suppliers' perspective”. By linking service supply chain management and human resource management, this study also answers a few calls for more research on the interaction of human resource management and supply chain management, service supply chain and human resource management in professional service firms.

This is one of the few studies to analyse the professional service supply chain management and assess the human resource management and supply chain management link. Moreover, it is the first study which empirically establishes the link between human resource management and professional service supply chain performance in PSFs.

Existing measures of productivity were designed to measure productivity in industries in which both input and output are tangible standardised quantities. They are inadequate for productivity measurement of professional services, where intangible and specialised factors of production are in use. This paper seeks to address the difficulties associated with the measurement of productivity of professional service firms and to propose a more adequate measure of productivity in these industries. This measure is tested on a sample of Swedish management consulting firms, and is assessed in relation to several performance indicators of these firms. The findings illustrate the inadequacy of the manufacturing‐based measurement procedures and demonstrate that a measure which acknowledges the unique characteristics of professional services correlates better with firms’ performance. As this field of research is in its infancy, these findings are only suggested as indications for direction in which future research is needed.