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The purpose of this study is to investigate the challenges of pricing quantity surveying (QS) professional services to enhance the understanding of practitioners in developing strategies for the determination of fees for their services.

The paper adopts the quantitative approach by administering 150 survey questionnaires QS professionals out of which 79 questionnaires were retrieved for analysis using the mean, standard deviation, standard error and the Chi-Square test.

The study identified the challenges that continue to hamper the successful pricing of QS services as the inability to respond to changing contractual arrangements; lack of appropriate response to emerging services; slow response to changes in information and communication technology.

This paper focused on QS professionals. Hence, a future study to encompass other professionals in the built environment will be novel.

The findings of this paper have the potential to motivate QS firms to develop solutions that address the challenges identified to improve the efficiency of their service delivery to clients. The paper also has the practical importance of opening up new frontiers of research that focus on pricing of professional services in the built environment in general.

The paper contributes to the awareness and understanding of QS professionals about the challenges that continue to hamper effective pricing of their services.

This study explores the professional work of managers in professional service firms (PSFs) by focusing on the relational position of managers as they interface between diverse groups of actors and navigate a multiplicity of accountabilities.

Drawing on an ethnographic study of managers in a Brazilian PSF, this study demonstrates through observations, interviews and shadowing how PSF managers address multiple accountabilities in the conduct of professional work.

To navigate multiple accountabilities, PSF managers perform several forms of boundary work, which the authors conceptualize as “revamping” and “remolding” operations and “translating” and “transforming” understandings. The form of boundary work performed depends on the configuration of two elements of accountability demands: knowledge orientation and extent of exposure. Although analytically distinct, these elements intertwine, suggesting the need for a dynamic perspective on accountability. The analysis shows that professional work extends beyond fixed or passive views of hierarchical and intrinsic accountability to emphasize that managers exude accountability of an adaptive nature.

This study illustrates and theorizes the role of boundary work in PSFs, develops its link to accountability, and identifies its scholarly and practical affordances and limitations for understanding managers’ professional work when navigating multiple accountabilities.

The findings reveal perspectives and behaviors of managers embedded in PSFs, illustrating their unstructured and agentic experiences of accountability and boundary work in practice. The insights can be extended to other contexts where managers face multiple accountabilities in conducting professional work.

This paper aimed to explore the main strategies and approaches to innovation in professional service firms (PSFs), with a specific focus on accounting firms.

The paper relied upon a systematic literature review of previous studies to identify and reconcile the different approaches to innovation processes in accounting firms and further advance a conceptual framework for their discussion.

The findings, based on the review of 38 papers, revealed four main strategies around two main dimensions: the focus on internal/external features of the firm and the main source of innovation (technology and knowledge). The strategies may enable PSFs finding new opportunities and improving organizational performance.

The paper provides a conceptual framework in the form of a “strategy-innovation” matrix where four strategies emerged to support PSFs identifying possible approaches to innovation for new opportunities and improving their performance and services. In doing so, the paper bridges the main sources of innovation, knowledge and technology with key organizational features, considering structural/organizational aspects, cultural aspects, HR practices, collaborative behaviors, professional autonomy, service diversification and the role of professional networks and external actors.

The paper contributes to the literature by deepening understanding of innovation processes in PSFs, suggesting the need to develop a strategic orientation to innovation in these firms. In doing so, the paper also provides useful practical implications for the management of PSFs, suggesting an “innovation/strategy” matrix that might support the positioning of PSFs with reference to its approach to innovation.

In recent years, scholarly focus has shifted towards exploring the applications of disruptive technologies in professional services. These studies emphasise the need for further research in this domain. This research aims to comprehensively review the existing literature on the uses of blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms in professional services such as higher education, healthcare, financial securities firms and smart energy consulting. The rapid innovation and advancement in technology have led to substantial improvements in work efficiency and productivity. As industries transition towards sustainability and digitalisation, the role of energy-efficient systems becomes important in shaping smart factory designs and in further implementations. The uses of AI and other disruptive technologies for business operations not only boost production efficiency but also enhance customer satisfaction. Central to this transformation are strategies like deep learning and data/text mining, which facilitate the shift from conventional manufacturing practices to smart manufacturing. Apart from smart energy systems, the fields of higher education, healthcare and financial securities are witnessing a surge in the applications of AI, ML algorithms and blockchain technology and their contributions in emerging service economy. This study undertakes a comprehensive investigation into various factors associated with the application of disruptive technologies, evaluating their impact on the operational efficiency of professional service firms (PSFs). Through this research, we aim to identify gaps in the current literature and will suggest the directions for future research.

Increasingly, emerging information technologies such as shared software and continuous accounting are offering alternative ways to perform accounting tasks in a supposedly more efficient fashion. Yet, few studies have investigated how they affect the provision of accounting services, especially in the context of small accounting firms, which provide legal and tax services to entrepreneurs and businesses. Drawing on the service perspective, the paper critically examines how technological innovation challenges and reconfigures the co-production of accounting services in these firms.

The paper answers calls issued in prior studies to conduct empirical research on emerging information technologies for accountants. It focuses on the specific context of small accounting firms and draws on interviews with small accounting firms' managers (n = 20).

The study emphasizes five significant challenges that accounting firm managers face when using information technologies to support the provision of their services (ensuring reliability, factoring in their heterogeneous client base, repricing, training clients to use new technologies and promoting advisory services). Information technologies are shown to have a structuring role in the co-production of accounting services, as they lead to reconfigurations of the relationships between accountants and their clients. A range of four configurations is developed to highlight accountants' strategies to maintain collaborative relationships with their clients while integrating new technologies into their work practices.

By conceptualizing accounting services as a co-production process, the paper offers new insights into the implications of emerging information technologies for small accounting firms.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of interaction in supporting value co-creation during pre-purchase customer journey stages when selling professional B-to-B services. First, value co-creation in professional service firms (PSFs) is reviewed, and, second, the role of interaction in the different stages of a customer’s pre-purchase journey is explored, specifically in the context of B-to-B human resource management services.

Qualitative, semi-structured interview data was collected from potential B2B customers of a PSF in question, providing a broad coverage of prospective clients in architecture, engineering and IT sector.

In general, the findings of this study indicate that interaction plays a crucial role in pre-purchasing stages of a customer journey. In particular, these findings form understanding of how various interaction channels and content support PSF’s ability to co-create value with its prospects.

The existing research tends to concentrate on how value is created for existing customers, and far less attention has been paid to the perspective of prospects. This study contributes theoretically by providing novel insights into the current literature on value co-creation in PSFs by providing an understanding of how interactions in pre-purchase phases affect the co-creation of value from the perspective of prospects, which is a less researched viewpoint. Empirically, this study offers managers much-needed, context-specific knowledge of PSFs by comparing differences and pulling together similarities from each customer journey stage of PSF prospects.

Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights, this study explores how LGBTIQ+ staff navigated shifting technologies of client power, at the time marriage equality was legislated in Australia.

This article explores changing experiences of LGBTIQ+ staff and allies, through 56 semi-structured interviews undertaken through 2018–2019.

Technologies of client power were central to shaping workplace experiences for LGBTIQ+ staff. However, each firm was also keen to carve unique and bold responses to changing societal attitudes regarding sexuality and gender. These progressive moves did not sit comfortably with all clients, and so this article provides insight into the limitations of client privilege within professional services firms. For staff, this increasing complexity of sometimes opaque, contradictory and shifting technologies of client and firm power, enabled agency to explore a sense of self for some, but continued to exclude others.

Little attention has been directed to exploring challenges for staff of sexual and gendered diversity within professional services firms, or to exploring how staff navigate changing perceptions of client power.

The purpose of this study is to identify contextual antecedents for team learning in professional service firms.

Structural equation modelling was applied to establish reliability and validity and to measure the size of relationships. Evidence was drawn from an empirical sample of 210 consultants in the Nordic professional service industry.

The findings of this study reveal and strongly support that two important contextual antecedent factors that facilitate for team learning in professional service firms are market orientation and leader support for collaborative learning practices. The effect of leader support on team learning is also mediated by a market orientation.

There is a paucity of knowledge on contextual factors that contribute to team learning. This study provides insight of theoretical and practical value.

In a rapidly changing career landscape where lifelong job security is no longer guaranteed, this study investigates how audit firms play an important role in shaping their employees’ career perceptions and the subsequent effects on auditor behavior. Specifically, it explores the link between audit firms’ career development initiatives and auditors’ perceptions of external employability – an important determinant of auditor behavior. Using the framework of social exchange theory, the study investigates how perceived external employability affects both relational and operational behaviors of auditors.

The study employs structural equation modeling on survey data from 359 auditors.

The results indicate that when audit firms actively support career development, it positively contributes to auditors’ perceived external employability. A higher perceived external employability, in turn, leads to positive behavioral outcomes among auditors, including stronger relational behaviors (such as professional commitment) and operational behaviors (including heightened professional skepticism and reduced behaviors that could compromise audit quality).

This study uncovers a paradox where perceived external employability, typically viewed as a risk, emerges as a potent driver of desirable auditor behavior. In today’s dynamic career landscape, emphasizing individual-centered and flexible careers, these results highlight the benefits of perceived external employability. Rather than undermining audit services, increased perceived external employability driven by firm investments in auditors’ careers acts as a catalyst for desirable auditor behavior. Organizational support in terms of career development practices creates an environment where auditors are more committed, professionally skeptical and uphold the quality of audit services.

This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.