The Ambiguity of Professional Service Work

Digitalization has the potential to disrupt many service industries. This is already evident in industries offering standardized business-to-consumer services. Even knowledge-intensive business-to-business (B2B) services have increasingly blended digital technologies. Yet, little is known about how this type of service and its associated service work has changed, as tasks are being increasingly performed by robots or through artificial intelligence. This study fills this void by exploring how frontline workers in two highly knowledge-intensive B2B service industries—auditing and public relations/communication (PR/C) consulting—enact their service work in response to digitalization. Building on an interview study with 50 professionals and taking an interdisciplinary stance we find—contrary to the findings in previous research—that auditing firms embrace digitalization to a larger extent than PR/C firms. Further, we find that the frontline workers’ enactment of their service work is influenced by the fit between technological innovations and the type of intelligence their services are built on, as well as their occupational identities and the service climate within the firms. We conclude the article by developing propositions and a conceptual model, and outline how service firms can support their frontline workers’ infusion of digital technologies in their service work.

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Task Variety in Professional Service Work: When It Helps and When It Hurts

Production and Operations Management ◽

10.1111/poms.12874 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 27 (7) ◽

pp. 1368-1389 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Emmanouil Avgerinos ◽

Bilal Gokpinar

Keyword(s):

Professional Service ◽

Service Work ◽

Task Variety

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A new professionalism? Challenges and opportunities

Current Sociology ◽

10.1177/0011392111402585 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 59 (4) ◽

pp. 406-422 ◽

Cited By ~ 259

Author(s):

Julia Evetts

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Final Section ◽

Professional Service ◽

Service Work ◽

International Firms ◽

Organizational Contexts ◽

Challenges And Opportunities ◽

Client Relations ◽

Public Sector Service ◽

Sector Service

Sociologists interested in professional work and occupations have differentiated professionalism as a distinctive and special way of controlling and organizing work and workers, with real advantages for both practitioners and clients. In this interpretation the analysis of professionalism is as an ‘occupational value’. But professionalism is changing and being changed as professionals now increasingly work in large-scale organizational workplaces and sometimes in international firms. This article explains professionalism as an occupational value and indicates both the changes to and continuities in professionalism in these organizational contexts. Then some of the possible consequences of the redefinition of professionalism are examined for practitioner-workers and their clients in public sector service work such as health, welfare and education. These consequences include changes in the work itself, in practitioner—employer and practitioner—client relations, and in the control of work priorities and processes. The final section considers if there might also be some advantages in the combination of professional and organizational logics for controlling work and workers and whether there are opportunities associated with these changes which might improve both the conduct and practice of professional service work, while being of benefit to practitioners and clients.

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Book Review: Living Knowledge: The Dynamics of Professional Service Work

Management Learning ◽

10.1177/1350507606067386 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 407-409

Author(s):

Deborah Blackman

Keyword(s):

Professional Service ◽

Service Work

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The Big 4 in Bangladesh: caught between the global and the local

Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal ◽

10.1108/aaaj-10-2014-1840 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 145-163 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Ataur Belal ◽

Crawford Spence ◽

Chris Carter ◽

Jingqi Zhu

Keyword(s):

Emerging Markets ◽

Cultural Barriers ◽

Professional Service ◽

Service Work ◽

Local Market ◽

Service Firms ◽

Professional Service Firms ◽

Full Member ◽

Content Type ◽

Big 4

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the work practices of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh with the aim of exploring the extent to which global professional service firms (GPSFs) can be thought of as being genuinely “global”. Design/methodology/approach Interviews were undertaken with the vast majority of Big 4 partners in Bangladesh. These interviews explored a number of themes related to the professional service work context in Bangladesh and the relationship between local and global firms. Findings The central finding of this paper is that although the Big 4 have a long-established presence in Bangladesh, local societal factors heavily influence the realities of work for accountants there. In most cases the Big 4 firms establish correspondent firms (instead of full member firms) in Bangladesh and tend to offer restricted service lines. Additionally, the paper identifies professional, commercial and cultural barriers to greater Big 4 involvement in the local market. Conceptually, the chief contribution of this paper is to explore how the effects of globalizing capitalism and standardised “best practices” in global professional service work are mediated through the societal effects of Bangladeshi society, resulting in the Big 4 having only a tentative presence in the Bangladeshi market. Research limitations/implications The findings cast doubt on the extent to which self-styled GPSFs are truly “global” in nature. Future work examining the Big 4, or accounting more generally, in the context of globalization, would do well to pay greater attention to the experience of professionals in emerging markets. Originality/value Whilst there has been much work looking at accounting and accountants in the context of globalization, this work has tended to privilege “core” western empirical settings. Very little is known about professional service firms in “peripheral” emerging markets. Furthermore, this study extends the application of the system, society and dominance framework by mapping the interactions and dynamics of these three sources of influence in the setting of PSFs.

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