IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijmcph/v9y2015i1p40-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From purists to players? How service industry professionals develop social skills for informal client relationships

Author

Listed:
  • Yvette Taminiau
  • Julie E. Ferguson

Abstract

Developing informal client relationships is an essential social skill for service industry professionals, such as accountants. This skill can be considered a form of 'social knowledge', a key enabler in facilitating communications, and helping professionals distinguish themselves from competitors. In this paper, we study how service professionals in the accounting industry develop their social skills in relating to clients, and how they thereby cope with conflicting demands: on the one hand, market and commercial pressures entice accountants to engage more in informal client relationship development, while on the other, these very relationships are restricted through increasingly strict regulation and professional codes of conduct. We explain how different categories of accountants - purists and players - cope with this tension in their social practices, and how they develop new approaches toward informal client relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Yvette Taminiau & Julie E. Ferguson, 2015. "From purists to players? How service industry professionals develop social skills for informal client relationships," International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(1), pages 40-62.
  • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijmcph:v:9:y:2015:i:1:p:40-62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=75122
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richter, Ansgar & Niewiem, Sandra, 2009. "Knowledge transfer across permeable boundaries: An empirical study of clients' decisions to involve management consultants," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 275-288, September.
    2. Joe O'Mahoney & Stefan Heusinkveld & Christopher Wright, 2013. "Commodifying the Commodifiers: The Impact of Procurement on Management Knowledge," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 204-235, March.
    3. Nikolova, Natalia & Reihlen, Markus & Schlapfner, Jan-Florian, 2009. "Client-consultant interaction: Capturing social practices of professional service production," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 289-298, September.
    4. Höner, Dirk & Mohe, Michael, 2009. "Behind clients' doors: What hinders client firms from "professionally" dealing with consultancy?," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 299-312, September.
    5. John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid, 2001. "Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 198-213, April.
    6. Jim Kitay & Christopher Wright, 2004. "Take the money and run? Organisational boundaries and consultants' roles," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 1-18, May.
    7. Yvette Taminiau, 2013. ""It looks like friendship but it's not", the institutional embeddedness of informal client relationships of Big 4 accountants and consultants compared," International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 7(2), pages 128-149.
    8. Scott D. N. Cook & John Seely Brown, 1999. "Bridging Epistemologies: The Generative Dance Between Organizational Knowledge and Organizational Knowing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 381-400, August.
    9. Jamal Shamsie & Michael J. Mannor, 2013. "Looking Inside the Dream Team: Probing Into the Contributions of Tacit Knowledge as an Organizational Resource," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 513-529, April.
    10. Catherine Durnell Cramton, 2001. "The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 346-371, June.
    11. Daniel Z. Levin & Rob Cross, 2004. "The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(11), pages 1477-1490, November.
    12. Alban Fischer & Jan Henrik Sieg & Martin W. Wallin & Georg von Krogh, 2014. "What motivates professional service firm employees to nurture client dialogues?," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(5), pages 399-421, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yvette Taminiau & Julie Ferguson & Christine Moser, 2016. "Instrumental client relationship development among top-ranking service professionals," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(15-16), pages 789-808, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yvette Taminiau & Julie Ferguson & Christine Moser, 2016. "Instrumental client relationship development among top-ranking service professionals," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(15-16), pages 789-808, December.
    2. Ferguson, J.E. & Huysman, M.H., 2009. "Between ambition and approach: towards sustainable knowledge management in development organizations," Serie Research Memoranda 0003, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    3. Andrew J. Nelson, 2016. "How to Share “A Really Good Secret”: Managing Sharing/Secrecy Tensions Around Scientific Knowledge Disclosure," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 265-285, April.
    4. Emmanuelle Vaast & Geoff Walsham, 2009. "Trans-Situated Learning: Supporting a Network of Practice with an Information Infrastructure," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 547-564, December.
    5. Maria Franca Norese & Diana Rolando & Rocco Curto, 2023. "DIKEDOC: a multicriteria methodology to organise and communicate knowledge," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(2), pages 1049-1082, June.
    6. Valle, Sandra & García, Francisco & Avella, Lucía, 2015. "Offshoring Intermediate Manufacturing: Boost or Hindrance to Firm Innovation?," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 117-134.
    7. Renzl, Birgit, 2008. "Trust in management and knowledge sharing: The mediating effects of fear and knowledge documentation," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 206-220, April.
    8. Müller, Felix Claus & Ibert, Oliver, 2014. "(Re-)Sources of Innovation: Understanding and Comparing Innovation Dynamics through the Lens of Communities of Practice," IRS Working Papers 52, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS).
    9. Ward van Zoonen & Anu Sivunen & Kirsimarja Blomqvist & Thomas Olsson & Annina Ropponen & Kaisa Henttonen & Matti Vartiainen, 2021. "Factors Influencing Adjustment to Remote Work: Employees’ Initial Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(13), pages 1-19, June.
    10. Linda Argote & Sunkee Lee & Jisoo Park, 2021. "Organizational Learning Processes and Outcomes: Major Findings and Future Research Directions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(9), pages 5399-5429, September.
    11. Heusinkveld, Stefan & Visscher, Klaasjan, 2012. "Practice what you preach: How consultants frame management concepts as enacted practice," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 285-297.
    12. Suning Zhu & Ashish Gupta & David Paradice & Casey Cegielski, 2019. "Understanding the Impact of Immersion and Authenticity on Satisfaction Behavior in Learning Analytics Tasks," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 791-814, August.
    13. Davide Nicolini, 2011. "Practice as the Site of Knowing: Insights from the Field of Telemedicine," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 602-620, June.
    14. Sanghyun Park & Phanish Puranam, 2020. "Learning what they think vs. learning what they do: The micro-foundations of vicarious learning," Papers 2007.15264, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2020.
    15. Khanna, Rajat, 2023. "Passing the torch of knowledge: Star death, collaborative ties, and knowledge creation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    16. Agterberg, M. & Hooff, B. van den & Huysman, M., 2008. "Keeping the wheels turning : multi-level dynamics in organizing networks of practice," Serie Research Memoranda 0003, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    17. Alessia Contu & Hugh Willmott, 2003. "Re-Embedding Situatedness: The Importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 283-296, June.
    18. Agulles, Remei & Prats, Mª Julia, 2011. "Learning in practice: What organizational and management literature can contribute to professional and occupational development," IESE Research Papers D/938, IESE Business School.
    19. Kimberly D. Elsbach & Pamela S. Barr & Andrew B. Hargadon, 2005. "Identifying Situated Cognition in Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(4), pages 422-433, August.
    20. Claude Paraponaris, 2017. "Le passage des frontières : difficultés et perspectives. L’expérience des frontières cognitives," Post-Print halshs-01579851, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijmcph:v:9:y:2015:i:1:p:40-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=90 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.