Collaborative value creation (otherwise known as value co-creation) is a concept that has been explored over the years in the context of knowledge - intensive business services (KIBS) such as management consulting, engineering services, etc. A body of studies has investigated how to foster value co-creation among KIBS providers, clients, and partners during KIBS engagements. Knowledge processes have been identified as an important enabler of value co-creation. In organizations more generally, knowledge management systems and related ICT tools (referred to as KM tools in this research) have been identified to support knowledge processes. However, the support provided to knowledge processes in the specific context of KIBS engagements is yet to be explored. Through the development of a conceptual framework that examines the linkages between KM tools, knowledge processes, and value co-creation in the context of KIBS engagements, this research investigates how knowledge management systems provide support to value co-creation in KIBS engagements. We adopt a multiple case study research design. Using eight semi-structured interviews, we obtained data on knowledge processes and KM tools in KIBS engagements. The result is a refined framework that illustrates the type of KM tools currently used in KIBS engagements, the knowledge processes they support, and their relationship to value co-creation. We also present a discussion of how this framework can be applied practically. At a conceptual level, this study contributes to the field of KIBS by identifying how exactly knowledge processes provide support to value co-creation processes in KIBS engagements, and how KM tools provide support to knowledge processes. At a practical level, this study contribute s to the field of knowledge management systems design by providing guidance on the KM tools that can meet the specific needs of service providers, clients, and partners in the domain of knowledge-intensive services.

Whilst utilization of management consulting services has become an integral part of the contemporary economy and functioning of many organizations, intangibility leaves clients unable to predict or objectively assess the values created in consulting engagements. According to scholars, attempts to counteract the principal-agent related risks of opportunism and divergent incentives are expected to increase following higher competition, consumer awareness and anticipated increased demand for performance-based pricing. Improved comprehension of means to evaluate consulting services should become increasingly significant not only for the management consulting firms with increasing needs to tangibilize value and prove “success” to a greater extent, but also for the purchasing organizations in both private and public sectors. The academic attention to the industry has been described as surprisingly low, and previous scholars urge for increased empirical data on evaluation practices in general, and for additional contexts and sizes of consulting firms, in particular. Accordingly, this study aims to contribute with empirical data and understanding of consultants’ reasoning and approaches through asking; How do small Swedish management consulting firms approach evaluation of their engagements in terms of client satisfaction and value generated within the client organization, and; what is the rationale behind the eventual evaluation approach(es) used? Based on a literature review on primarily the fields of; the management consulting industry, intangibility of knowledge-intensive services, and scholarly suggested evaluation methods, semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers, partners and CEOs representing ten small-sized management consulting firms in Sweden. The purposively sampled respondents were categorized based on relative size and relative service offering, enabling comparison between size and type of business. Thematic analysis of the interviews showed great similarities between firms, and that valuation approaches are commonly unstructured, situational and goal-oriented, focused on aggregated satisfaction, rarely including objective measurements, initiated by the consultant, conducted through dialogue and sometimes supported by questionnaires. It was concluded that the evaluation approaches are generally highly subjective and focused on capturing client perceptions. Discrepancies between respondents’ practices and scholarly suggested methods were identified, and analysis of variations concluded that smaller firms seem to have less developed evaluation approaches. The respondents’ rationales were described and categorized into; drivers, deterrents and obstacles. Potential catalysts for change, including price sensitivity, client demand and performance-based pricing were identified. Whilst the study does provide requested empirical data and may facilitate improved comprehension of means to counteract intangibility to benefit clients and consultants - and hopefully increase public interest for these issues - further research is needed to nuance the findings, especially through capturing clients’ perspectives.

Purpose The purpose of this case study is to explore the measures which the engineering consulting firm use to retain their employees for sustaining competitive advantage. The key focus of the research is to address the reasons for high employee turnover and connect these reasons with the measures to retain employees to maintain a low employee turnover for sustained competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative and abductive approach is applied for this research with a single case study of a Swedish-based engineering consultancy firm. Data collection includes both primary and secondary data. Primary data was achieved based on semistructured and virtual interviews with five interview participants; two of them are at managerial levels. Secondary data include reports and documents from the case company, the Swedish Federation of Innovation Companies, and other relevant sources. Findings and conclusion Low employee turnover rate can help sustain a competitive advantage for an engineering consulting firm. Nine retention measures are explored in this study which includes eight non-financial measures and one financial measure which can be listed as: 1. Transformational leadership style; 2. Open and trusting culture and values of an organization 3. Talent management approach which enhances job security and opportunities for advancement; 4. Respectful, open, and inspiring communication; 5. The autonomy which empowers freedom and independence of work and decision-making; 6.Work-life balance; 7. Employer brand, interesting clients and meaningful projects; 8. Diversity of the workforce; 9. Fair compensation package Originality/Value This study contributes to the knowledge-intensive segment and the engineering consultancy field with insights from a leading Swedish engineering consulting firm. A newly established model is presented with concepts from previous research findings and the empirical findings of this research.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2018-07-11T16:18:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Fabiano Cardoso De Oliveira_.pdf: 3369336 bytes, checksum: b4dbb34d07459c52ebd7feff4185c041 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-11T16:18:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fabiano Cardoso De Oliveira_.pdf: 3369336 bytes, checksum: b4dbb34d07459c52ebd7feff4185c041 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-28 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Prover serviços públicos com qualidade e eficiência tem levado o governo a interferir nas operações de empresas privadas através de programas, contratos e parcerias. No entanto, estudos sobre os impactos destas intervenções sobre a eficiência em operações não foram encontrados na literatura. Esta pesquisa analisa os impactos do programa PRONATEC na eficiência de duas empresas de serviços intensivos em conhecimento, uma participante do programa e outra que não participante. Os impactos foram analisados longitudinalmente por um período de sete anos utilizando de maneira associada à Análise Envoltória de Dados e Análise de Variância em um estudo de caso em duas empresas do ramo de ensino técnico profissionalizante do Rio Grande do Sul, do período de 2009 a 2015, com foco em analisar a produção de resultado operacional e formação de alunos. A partir dos resultados comprovam-se os impactos da ação do Governo sobre a eficiência nas operações de empresas privadas. Finalmente, o estudo demonstra e suporta empiricamente a relação entre a participação ou não em programas governamentais e a eficiência em operações de empresas prestadoras de serviços intensivos em conhecimento. / Providing public services with quality and efficient has induced the government to interfere in the private companies’ operations by programs, contracts and partnerships. However, researches about the impacts of these interventions about the efficiency in operations were not found in the literature. This project studies the impact of the PRONATEC program in the efficiency of two knowledge-intensive services companies, one of them is a program participator, and the other it is not a program participator. The impacts were longitudinally analyzed for seven years, using an associated way the Data Envelopment Analysis and the Analysis of Variance in a case study in two companies which are focused in vocational technical education from Rio Grande do Sul, from 2009 to 2015, focused on analyze the production of operational result and training of students. From the results, it is verified the impact of the Government action on the efficiency in the operations of companies that provides knowledge-intensive services.

Marketing has traditionally been understood from the perspective of marketing management. This causes problems when we study marketing practices because the normative discourse of marketing management is not particularly useful for describing the day-to-day work of marketing practitioners. This calls for marketing research from new perspectives. Rhetorical business – A study of marketing work in the spirit of contradiction investigates marketing work in professional service organizations from a rhetorical perspective. The overall research question – What do marketers do when they do marketing work? – is explored empirically through conversations, observations and daily interaction and argumentation with professionals involved in the marketing of consulting services. The rhetorical theory applied in the analysis builds on the assumption that every reasonable argument can be met with an equally reasonable counterargument, which is not only how we argue but also a representation of how we gain knowledge of the world – namely, by contradicting it. The analysis is organized in three themes – situation, strategy and subject – that address questions such as Where and when do marketers argue for business purposes? What rhetorical strategies are used?, and How can the subjects of marketing work be portrayed? This is followed by a discussion of the analysis under the two headings persuasive marketing talk and marketing work “in-between”. This book concludes that marketing work is accomplished by self-reflexive marketers who argue for business purposes in, through and in-between meetings as they employ versatile and expansive language and enact contradictory selves. In so concluding the book contributes a multifaceted account of marketing work beyond the framework of normative marketing management. It also shows how rhetorical theory can be used in marketing research to analyse aspects of marketing practice that would otherwise have been poorly accounted for. Finally, the book is written as a “confessional tale” by an author with long experience of marketing work, in the hope that it may encourage self-reflexive inquires among professionals involved in marketing.

Interactions are of critical importance in business-to-business contexts, and value seems to be influenced by the interactions between the supplier, customer and other third parties where these interactions co-creates value. However, as the literature has mostly focused on the positive value co-creation, the interactions that result in failure is instead co-destroying value. This thesis is therefore going to study the negative interaction outcome, value co-destruction, in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms from a supplier perspective, where interactions are shown to be critical, to explore proactive practices that could be utilized in order to prevent value co-destruction between the customer and the KIBS firm as well as practices to recover from value codestruction. Through a qualitative multiple-case study, the data was collected from KIBS representatives in the IT-industry in Sweden, that provided empirical data to further nuance the phenomenon. Customer education, unveiling business opportunities, customer surveys, and business events was discovered to be used for proactively preventing value co-destruction, where the authors also found the time aspect of the relationship between value co-creation and value co-destruction to be of importance in preventing miscommunications that result in value co-destruction. Therefore, the authors of this thesis argue that miscommunications and acknowledgment of the miscommunication that co-destroys value often occurs at different time points, where the proactive practices might be targeted towards preventing the miscommunication or targeted towards the recovery from the value co-destruction.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2015-07-06T13:02:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 José Jerônimo de Menezes Lima.pdf: 1888440 bytes, checksum: aa54ca9f171e17e14a874a7eabfe31b7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-06T13:02:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 José Jerônimo de Menezes Lima.pdf: 1888440 bytes, checksum: aa54ca9f171e17e14a874a7eabfe31b7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-07-22 / Nenhuma / O objeto de estudo desta tese é a análise dos efeitos de Comunidades de Prática (CoPs) na Capacidade Absortiva (CA) em Empresas Intensivas em Conhecimento (EICs). Esta pesquisa se situa no campo de estudos de comportamento organizacional e trata dos temas da Gestão do Conhecimento (GC) e Aprendizagem Organizacional (AO). Nessa direção, a principal contribuição desta tese é de natureza teórica e visa analisar os fatores de funcionamento dos processos de CoPs que podem contribuir para a CA em EICs avaliando a real contribuição desses fatores, visando orientar a criação e operacionalização de CoPs eficazes nessas empresas. A tese tem por pressuposto que EICs têm processos essencialmente baseados na GC; AO é fundamental para a eficácia da GC em EICs, uma vez que viabiliza o compartilhamento e a assimilação do conhecimento para a inovação e a solução de problemas; CoPs, no contexto de EICs, ao agregarem conhecimentos, pessoas, processos e tecnologias, facilitam a AO; e, ao facilitar a AO, CoPs contribuem para a CA em EICs. A partir dessas premissas, esta tese responder à seguinte questão de pesquisa: Quais são os efeitos de comunidades de prática na capacidade absortiva em empresas intensivas em conhecimento? Nessa direção, foram estabelecidas as seguintes hipóteses: CoPs são mecanismos que facilitam a dimensão Aquisição do processo da Capacidade Absortiva Potencial (CAp) em EICs (H1), CoPs são mecanismos que facilitam a dimensão Assimilação do processo da CAp em EICs (H2); CoPs são mecanismos que facilitam a dimensão Transformação do processo de Capacidade Absortiva Realizada (CAr) em EICs (H3), CoPs são mecanismos que facilitam a dimensão Aplicação do processo de CAr em EICs (H4) e CoPs são mecanismos que facilitam a CAr por decorrência da CAp em EICs (H5). Este estudo utilizou métodos de pesquisa online e partiu de uma pesquisa qualitativa exploratória baseada em netnografia, em seguida realizou pesquisa quantitativa baseada em survey e, finalmente, foi realizada pesquisa qualitativa confirmatória com gestores de CoPs e de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento (P&D) das EICs estudadas. Foram pesquisadas 10 EICs, abrangendo 90 CoPs e 9.998 participantes. A pesquisa coletou 1.104 respostas. Um modelo teórico foi desenvolvido e testado por Modelagem de Equações Estruturais (MEE) para validar as hipóteses formuladas. Especificamente analisando os efeitos de CoPs na CA em EICs, a pesquisa confirma que CoPs são mecanismos eficazes de CAp, maximizando as atividades de aquisição e assimilação de conhecimentos externos e assim contribuindo diretamente para a CAp (H1 e H2). Por outro lado, não confirma que CoPs são mecanismos eficazes de CAr, e que as atividades de transformação e aplicação de conhecimentos externos pouco ou nem sempre contribuem diretamente para a inovação (H3 e H4). Ainda, a pesquisa confirma a ideia de que CoPs são mecanismos que, ao contribuírem de modo eficaz diretamente para a CAp, colaboram indiretamente para a eficácia da CAr (H5). Espera-se que esta tese tenha trazido mais luz à discussão sobre a possibilidade de que CoPs sejam considerados espaços privilegiados de aprendizagem organizacional e de articulação de saberes para melhorar CA e gerar inovação em EICs. / The object of study of this dissertation is the analysis of the effects of Communities of Practice (CoPs) on the Absorptive Capacity (AC) in Intensive Knowledge Companies (IKCs). This research lies within the field of organizational behavior studies related to Knowledge Management (KM) and Organizational Learning (OL). In this direction, the main contribution of this thesis is theoretical in nature and aims at analyzing the dynamic factors of CoPs processes that can be contributory to AC in IKCs evaluating the real contribution of these factors aiming at guiding creation and implementation of more effective CoPs in this type of company. This thesis, on principle, begins according to the following assumptions: that IKCs have essentially processes based on KM; OL is key to the effectiveness of KM in IKCs, as it enables the sharing and assimilation of knowledge for innovation and problem solving in groups; as CoPs, in the context of IKCs, aggregate knowledge, people, processes and technologies, they provide grounds to OL; and as doing so, they contribute to AC in IKCs. From these premises, this thesis searched to answer the following research question: what are the effects of CoPs in the AC in IKCs? In this direction, the following hypotheses were established: CoPs are mechanisms that facilitate the acquisition process of Potential Absorptive Capacity Process (PAC) in IKCs (H1); CoPs are mechanisms that enable the assimilation process of the PAC in IKCs (H2); CoPs are mechanisms that facilitate the transformation process of Accomplished Absorptive Capacity (AAC) in IKCs (H3); CoPs are mechanisms that facilitate the application process of the AAC in IKCs (H4); and CoPs are mechanisms that pave the way to the AAC by a result of PAC in IKCs (H5). This study used methods of online survey and came from an exploratory qualitative research based on netnography, then it conducted a quantitative survey-based research, and finally a qualitative research to confirm or disprove it with moderators and administrators of CoPs and managers of R&D of the IKCs. Ten IKCs were surveyed, covering 90 CoPs, 9,998 participants. The survey had an amount of 1,104 responses. A theoretical model was developed and tested by structural equation modeling to validate the hypotheses formulated research. Analyzing specifically the effects of CoPs in AC on IKCs, it can point out that the research confirms the idea that CoPs are effective mechanisms for PAC, maximizing the acquisition and assimilation activities of external knowledge and thus contributing directly to PAC (H1 and H2). On the other hand, this research does not confirm the idea that CoPs are effective mechanisms of AAC, and that the transformation and application activities of external knowledge little or hardly ever directly contribute to innovation (H3 and H4). Still, research confirms the idea that CoPs are mechanisms which, at the same time, contribute effectively straightforward to PAC, and collaborate indirectly to the effectiveness of the AAC (H5).

<p>Background: Recruitment and development of employees is a large burden for companies in most industries. Because of this, there is a clear organizational imperative to attract and retain knowledge workers since these constitute an important resource, especially for knowledge intensive organizations. A decisive factor for success is thus to retain and develop this vital resource in order to upgrade and sustain competitive advantage. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what internal determinants and structures might be needed for knowledge intensive organizations to ensure their long-term provision of key human resources. </p><p>Practical Approach: In total ten interviews, with interviewees at different levels in the organization, have been conducted. Furthermore, other forms of secondary empirical material of both qualitative and quantitative character have been used. </p><p>Results: It is important for an organization to attempt to create a consistent and durable identity in order to influence the image held by its different stakeholders. We have found that researchers seem to value working in interesting projects. This argument coincides with the conviction that researchers are actually more committed to interesting research than to the employing organization.</p>

<p>Background: The dependency on knowledge and competence today is more critical than earlier. Today, companies need to put more effort into identifying and filling knowledge gaps, which can be achieved through mergers and acquisitions. It is important that the companies succeed in coordinating their operations after this process of change. Out of a theoretical point of view it can be argued that companies need to balance between different coordination mechanisms that result in standardized and flexible coordination respectively. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this Master Thesis is, in the context of a merger, to investigate and analyze which coordination mechanisms that are used in knowledge-intensive companies, how these coordination mechanisms are combined and what explains the chosen combination. </p><p>Scope: The study has been accomplished through qualitative research with interviews within the consultancy firm Cap Gemini Ernst&Young supplemented by interviews with the IT-consultancies WM-data and DataVis as well as the industrial firm SAAB Bofors Dynamics. </p><p>Results: The combination of coordination mechanisms used has been identified, which has given a possibility to study changes in the balance. The balance of coordination in the consultancy firms has relatively moved towards a higher degree of standardized coordination. We believe this is due to the consultancy firms attempts of raising their productivity with reduced customer adaptation and creativity as a consequence. SAAB, on the other hand, is moving towards a more flexible coordination but from a starting-point with a more standardized coordination in an effort of acheiving a higher degree of customer adaptation and creativity.</p>

Background: The dependency on knowledge and competence today is more critical than earlier. Today, companies need to put more effort into identifying and filling knowledge gaps, which can be achieved through mergers and acquisitions. It is important that the companies succeed in coordinating their operations after this process of change. Out of a theoretical point of view it can be argued that companies need to balance between different coordination mechanisms that result in standardized and flexible coordination respectively. Purpose: The purpose of this Master Thesis is, in the context of a merger, to investigate and analyze which coordination mechanisms that are used in knowledge-intensive companies, how these coordination mechanisms are combined and what explains the chosen combination. Scope: The study has been accomplished through qualitative research with interviews within the consultancy firm Cap Gemini Ernst&amp;Young supplemented by interviews with the IT-consultancies WM-data and DataVis as well as the industrial firm SAAB Bofors Dynamics. Results: The combination of coordination mechanisms used has been identified, which has given a possibility to study changes in the balance. The balance of coordination in the consultancy firms has relatively moved towards a higher degree of standardized coordination. We believe this is due to the consultancy firms attempts of raising their productivity with reduced customer adaptation and creativity as a consequence. SAAB, on the other hand, is moving towards a more flexible coordination but from a starting-point with a more standardized coordination in an effort of acheiving a higher degree of customer adaptation and creativity.