Knowledge Intensive Services' Suppliers and Clients

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with authors such as James Brian Quinn providing useful insights as to services. 17
These researchers conclude that forward-looking firms are applying IT and other
technologies to achieve services that are both efficient and customised. Software
and planning staff assume a key responsibility for guiding the innovation process so
that these technologies support the decisions required of the front-office staff.
More decisions about product configurations are made at the local level, within
these new frames of reference.The “flattening” of firm structures, means that
information on operations is rapidly processed and fed to senior levels of
management, rather than proceeding slowly through a many-layered management
chain. 18
Knowledge workers and management
A further literature that might be reviewed here, were there more space and time
available, would be that concerned with the MANAGEMENT of professional
workers (e.g. the work of William H Starbuck – cf Starbuck 1992). The main
problem confronting “knowledge management” appears to be the conflict between
companies’ seeking to control their intellectual assets, and professional workers
seeking to maintain their autonomy and own sources of reputation. The literature
on knowledge workers – and that on the political economy of information systems -
is worth examining here, but cannot be addressed in this paper.
17 E.g. Quinn and Pacquette (1990), Quinn, Dooley and Paquette (1990).
18 Quinn op cit. goes on to discuss several types of firm organisation and strategic issue that arise from
these developments.