CERTIFICATION CRITERIA MATRIX FOR EXPERT RATING OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

In the Latvian certification system of individuals, there is necessary to ensure appropriate process realization in the interests of public protection and government needs, which gets incorporated into the EU common structure. An assessment of the certification system and its institutional structure is done with the aim to develop proposals for the improvement of the Latvian certification system for reducing costs, while ensuring both high system efficiency and recipients services and the public interest. To achieve its goals, the research study provided a summary of the situation in Latvia, as well as in the neighbouring countries: Lithuania, Poland, Estonia and Finland. During the research study, there were used both the secondary and the primary sources of information. Primary research was carried out in Latvia and consisted of two parts: expert interviews and focus groups. The results of the research are guidance to the overall approach and the criteria by which to guide one in the future, for setting which professional service providers require a mandatory certification. A matrix was made in the process of the research, which helps to define a certified profession, taking into account the need to protect the public interest and the level of national involvement in the regulation of specific areas of professional services.

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Professional Conduct and Practice

Journal of the Institute of Actuaries ◽

10.1017/s0020268100017200 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 99 (2) ◽

pp. 107-130

Author(s):

H. F. Purchase

Keyword(s):

Public Interest ◽

Professional Services ◽

General Effect ◽

Professional Conduct ◽

The Public ◽

General Line ◽

The Subject ◽

Professional Guidance

The Council of the Institute has for some time thought it would be advisable that members should have the opportunity of discussing the difficult problems of professional conduct and practice at a sessional meeting, particularly since the report on the subject by the Monopolies Commission (A report on the general effect on the public interest of certain restrictive practices so far as they prevail in relation to the supply of professional services. Cmnd. 4463). Hence this present paper.Although the paper has been written by the present Chairman of the Institute's Professional Guidance Committee, and the main arguments are in general line with the views of that committee and of Council, the emphasis given to various points and the views on the detailed contents must be regarded as personal to the author.

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Guidance For The Audit Committee: Acquiring Professional Services

Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR) ◽

10.19030/jabr.v20i3.2216 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Janet L. Colbert

Keyword(s):

Audit Committee ◽

Service Providers ◽

Internal Audit ◽

Professional Services ◽

Audit Committees ◽

Professional Service ◽

Font Size ◽

External Audit ◽

Sarbanes Oxley ◽

The Board Of Directors

Outside firms are often called upon to provide an entity with professional services.  Such services might include external audit, systems, accounting, appraisal and valuation, actuarial, consulting, tax, or agreed-upon procedures work.  The audit committee of the Board of Directors is typically the party within the entity responsible for hiring and overseeing these outside professional service providers.   The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 mandates that certain professional services, which may have previously been performed by the firm engaged to do the external audit, cannot be performed by that public accounting firm.  Thus, audit committees may be forced to contract with other professionals for services previously provided by the external auditors.  The task of locating, contracting with, and overseeing the work of qualified firms for these professional services may seem daunting to the audit committee.   This article presents steps the audit committee should take in selecting a professional service provider and overseeing that firm’s work.  Also given are ways in which the entity’s internal audit activity can provide significant assistance to the audit committee undertaking its tasks.

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Defective co-creation

European Journal of Marketing ◽

10.1108/ejm-07-2012-0411 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 49 (1/2) ◽

pp. 238-261 ◽

Cited By ~ 40

Author(s):

Dominique A. Greer

Keyword(s):

Critical Incident ◽

Consumer Behaviour ◽

Service Providers ◽

Professional Services ◽

Professional Service ◽

Service Encounters ◽

Service Dominant Logic ◽

Content Type ◽

Dominant Logic ◽

Depth Interviews

Purpose – This study aims to explore the scope of consumers’ defective co-creation behaviour in professional service encounters. One of the founding premises of service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008) is that consumers co-create the value they derive from service encounters. In practice, however, dysfunctional consumer behaviour can obstruct value co-creation. Extant research has not yet investigated consumers’ defective co-creation behaviour in highly relational services, such as professional services, that are heavily reliant on co-creation. Design/methodology/approach – To investigate defective co-creation in professional services, 164 critical incidents were collected from 38 health-care and financial service providers using the critical incident technique within semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Thematic coding was used to identify emergent themes and patterns of consumer behaviour. Findings – Thematic coding resulted in a comprehensive typology of consumers’ defective co-creation behaviour that both confirms the prevalence of previously identified dysfunctional behaviours (e.g. verbal abuse and physical aggression) and identifies two new forms of consumer misbehaviour: underparticipation and overparticipation. Further, these behaviours can vary, escalate and co-occur during service encounters. Originality/value – Both underparticipation and overparticipation are newly identified forms of defective co-creation that need to be examined within the broader framework of service-dominant logic (SDL).

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Referrals for new client acquisition in professional services

Qualitative Market Research An International Journal ◽

10.1108/qmr-04-2016-0039 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 28-42 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Stuart Grierson ◽

Ross Brennan

Keyword(s):

Service Providers ◽

Research Question ◽

Qualitative Interviews ◽

Professional Services ◽

Professional Service ◽

Business Success ◽

Content Type ◽

Starting Point ◽

Client Referral ◽

Referral Behavior

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address the following research question: What are the perceptions of professionals and consumers regarding the antecedents of client referrals in the financial advice sector? Design/methodology/approach A total of 61 qualitative interviews were conducted, with the following three key groups: independent financial advisers (IFAs; 20 interviews), clients of IFAs (26 interviews) and consumers who manage their own financial affairs and do not use the services of an IFA (15 interviews). Findings The financial advisers interviewed believe that client referrals are important to their business success, that they can influence clients to become ambassadors who will consciously seek out new clients and that excellent service will motivate clients to provide referrals. However, the interviews with the clients painted a different picture. While advisers believe that they can influence client referral behavior, the clients did not believe that they were influenced by the adviser to make referrals. Research limitations/implications The sampling method was non-random and relied on the professional contacts of the principal researcher as a starting point, from which a network of contacts was established to identify interviewees. The study casts doubt on the ability of professional service providers to influence client referral behavior. This novel finding deserves further research investigation. Practical implications There is clearly scope for greater measurement in connection with referrals in professional service businesses. The propensity for clients to refer should be included as a metric in the performance measurement of professional service providers, in addition to standard financial measures. This would encourage the service provider to consider referrals during client interactions. Originality/value The study reports on a substantial qualitative study involving both professional service providers and their clients. While the providers believe that client referrals are critical to their business success, the evidence collected provides little or no support for this belief. Clients report they are not motivated to refer. Advisers do not explicitly measure referrals. The reality of referrals seems not to match the mythology.

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External Defences

Defences to Copyright Infringement ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198795636.003.0009 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 301-349

Author(s):

Stavroula Karapapa

Keyword(s):

Public Interest ◽

Business Models ◽

Service Providers ◽

Competition Law ◽

Online Services ◽

Internet Service ◽

Legal Principles ◽

The Public ◽

Abuse Of Dominant Position ◽

Legal Grounds

Some defences are available on grounds that are extraneous to copyright and are based either on other bodies of law, such as competition law or e-commerce protection, or on general legal principles. These include, for instance, defences available to Internet service providers for infringements carried out by their users, including defences for hosting, caching, and ‘mere conduit’. Others are available on the grounds of competition law, such as refusal to license or abuse of dominant position, which could have a legal basis of application—inter alia—in certain mass digital activities of online services. Other available defences fall under general legal principles that can be invoked in cases where copyright exceptions do not cover an activity for which there is a principle-based justification for the particular conduct. Such a justification could be the public interest or the doctrine of the ‘abuse of right’. There are also a number of uses that can be permitted on grounds of benign infringement on the basis of the ‘innocuous use’ doctrine. Unlike other defences to copyright, these defensive rules represent instances where copyright may be subject to limitations as a result of its encounter with other legal orders. Such instances have either not been institutionalized within copyright law, such as speech entitlements or public policy privileges, or may have been partially included within it while offering principle-based explanations for acts of copyright infringement on the basis of legal grounds found in other areas of law or broader legal principles. These defences are an essential component to the understanding of the scope of permissible copyright use on the Internet as they can be extremely relevant in cases which involve online services and business models, such as hosting services, and online content use more broadly.

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Exploring customers’ zone of tolerance for B2B professional service quality

Journal of Services Marketing ◽

10.1108/jsm-06-2014-0212 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 29 (5) ◽

pp. 380-392 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Angus Ho ◽

Piyush Sharma ◽

Peter Hosie

Keyword(s):

Firm Size ◽

Service Providers ◽

Service Level ◽

Professional Services ◽

Professional Service ◽

Service Firms ◽

Content Type ◽

Customer Expectations ◽

Zone Of Tolerance ◽

Business To Business

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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. Research limitations/implications – 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. Practical implications – 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. Originality/value – 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.

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The mediating effects of customers’ intimacy perceptions on the trust-commitment relationship

Journal of Services Marketing ◽

10.1108/jsm-04-2014-0117 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 75-87 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Nicole Ponder ◽

Betsy Bugg Holloway ◽

John D. Hansen

Keyword(s):

Service Providers ◽

Social Bonds ◽

Model Development ◽

Professional Services ◽

Customer Relationships ◽

Professional Service ◽

Mediating Effects ◽

Interactive Communication ◽

Content Type ◽

Service Relationships

Purpose This paper aims to draw from intimacy theory in examining the mediating effects of interactive communication and social bonds on the trust–commitment relationship. Design/methodology/approach The study is conducted in the professional services context. Qualitative and quantitative data are gathered from respondents engaged in attorney–client and real estate–client relationships. Unstructured, in-depth interviews are first conducted for use in model development. Study hypotheses are examined and mediation tests are conducted utilizing the serial multiple mediator model proposed by Hayes (2013). Findings Study findings indicate that intimate relationships in the professional services context are characterized by interactive communication and social bonds, and that the variables act as full mediators of the trust–commitment relationship. Though trust has a positive and significant effect on commitment in isolation, this relationship becomes nonsignificant when simultaneously accounting for the effects of the two variables. Practical/implications Study findings suggest a need for programs designed to assist professional service providers in the development of intimate customer relationships. The importance of interactive communications and social bonding should be emphasized in these programs. Originality/value The study is one of the few empirical papers to investigate the role of intimacy in service relationships and the first to illustrate its mediating effects on the trust–commitment relationship.

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Understanding the Contesting Ideologies of Family Business: Challenge for Leadership and Professional Services

Family Business Review ◽

10.1177/08944865030160040301 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 241-250 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Matti Koiranen

Keyword(s):

Family Business ◽

Service Providers ◽

Theoretical Background ◽

Professional Services ◽

Professional Service ◽

Business System ◽

Management Ownership ◽

Ideological Tensions ◽

And Control ◽

Business Challenge

This paper examines how a family business system serves as the ideological arena of three cultural forces—entrepreneurialism, managerialism, and paternalism—that are, to a great extent, contesting ideologies based on different rationalities, or schools of thought. Furthermore, it reinforces the view that a family business system is the combination of three interacting subsystems (management, ownership, and family life)—a form of business that is challenging both for leaders and professional service providers. The approach of the study is conceptual and cultural. It bases its theoretical background on the developments of Johannisson and Huse (2000) and Tagiuri and Davis (1996). A summary of the key results appear in the synthesis of ideological tensions and are further developed in the suggested C3-model, emphasizing the need for balance among creation, caring, and control.

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8. Public Interest Immunity and Related Matters

10.1093/he/9780198864172.003.0008 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 190-203

Author(s):

Andrew L-T Choo

Keyword(s):

National Security ◽

Public Service ◽

Public Interest ◽

Freedom Of Information ◽

Sources Of Information ◽

Freedom Of Information Act ◽

Criminal Cases ◽

The Public ◽

Proper Functioning ◽

The Law

Chapter 8 examines the doctrine of public interest immunity. It discusses the development of the law; ‘class’ claims and ‘contents’ claims; national security and analogous concerns; proper functioning of the public service; the two main contexts in which public interest immunity disputes in criminal cases have arisen—the disclosure of the identity of police informers, and the disclosure of the location of police observation points; how the doctrine of public interest immunity stands alongside, and probably overlaps with, the operations of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; and section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, which governs the disclosure of sources of information contained in publications.

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