The aim of this paper is to show organizational perceptions and behaviours regarding proactive search for consultancy services. Management consulting is operating primarily through the analysis of perceived and existing organizational problems, but on the other hand it could be considered as a...

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are widely perceived as being important drivers of technological progress and innovation. KIBS are generally understood as depending, driving and thriving on knowledge exchanges and therefore, geographical proximity to markets, customers and suppliers...

The development of knowledge-intensive business services in recent decades can be interpreted as one of the indicators of a transformation from an industrial economy into a knowledge-based one. Not only do quantitative measures, whether in the form of sales or employment figures (e.g. Chadwick,...

The growing interest in Intellectual Capital management and Knowledge Management is now reaching small companies, especially those in the Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) sector. This paper aims to explore this issue, starting from the assumption that a planned and systematic...

This paper examines the concept of emergent KM approach in small companies. The origins of consideration are grounded in the theory of strategic management literature and in particular in the distinction between deliberate versus emergent approach towards strategic planning. Using the...

This work has been raised with the aim of analyzing the level of efficiency "benchmarking" and its explanatory factors of consulting audit firms in Spain. We have applied a semi-parametric model following the methodology of Simar and Wilson (2007). The main results show that five companies have...

Aim of this paper is to explore the main drivers of outsourcing of knowledge intensive business services by Italian manufacturing firms. While anecdotal and empirical evidence has emphasized labour cost and scale economies as behind firms' choices to outsource production or service activities,...

Employee referrals are a very common means by which firms hire new workers. Past work suggests that workers hired via referrals often perform better than non-referred workers, but we have little understanding as to why. In this paper, we demonstrate that this is primarily because referrals allow...

The municipalities in Norway are responsible for providing care for their inhabitants in need. The care takes two main forms: institutionalised care in nursing homes and home-based care. Based on cross-section data for 1995 for 471 municipalities the efficiency of the care activity is...

A variety of evidence points to significant growth in domestic contracting out over the last two decades, yet the phenomenon is not well documented. In this paper, we pull together data from various sources to shed light on the extent of and trends in domestic outsourcing, the occupations in...