Knowledge Intensive Services' Suppliers and Clients

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that is uppermost on the left. Such a KIBS may act as a source of intelligence on the
competition faced by the firm: it may be studying the technology used by competitors
and the available information on their new product and process strategy, examining
records dealing with their plans for establishing operations in various locations, looking
at market reports concerning their recruitment strategies, and so on. As with all KIBS,
such functions may be internalised within the client firm, or “outsourced” to a
specialised KIBS provider. One factor affecting this may be confidentiality issues –
when a KIBS serves several companies in the same sector, it may have to tread very
carefully and erect internal barriers to prevent confidential knowledge “leaking”.
This discussion raises the question of “absorption capacity”. The client must be
able to make use of the knowledge inputs from the KIBS. Even when a function has
been practically entirely ceded to a service provider, the client still has to play a role
in managing the service relationship – to ensure that it is receiving what it needs at
the appropriate cost.Thus it is likely that some knowledge functions relevant to the
KIBS will still need to be retained in-house by the client.
Continuing with the discussion centred on Figure 3, the KIBS are seen to be
mediating the flows of information depicted here.But what does this mean? It can
involve selecting or actively processing the information, or structuring the
relationships involved in the flow.There is thus a wide range of quite distinct
operations that may be performed by KIBS here (though in practice many KIBS
will perform several of these operations at any one time). The activities may centre
on:
• Locating information and/or creating it (from data, research, etc), and
processing and presenting it in useful forms to the organisation.This information
can be about information about the organisation itself or its
environment. The KIBS’ problem-solving activities may not necessarily
mean coming up with new solutions, generating new knowledge, then.
The KIBS task may involve application of methods of locating what can
be labelled as “best-practice” – in other words, a solution to the problem
that is already being demonstrated within the client organisation or elsewhere.
“Benchmarking” has become a widely used tool for examination
of how different actors are seeking to cope with common problems.
• Presenting information about the company and its operations to external
and/or internal audiences. In some cases (e.g. auditing) this may involve
extensive location and/or creation of the information. In some other cases
it may be largely a matter of processing data handed directly from the
organisation. And in many cases it will involve some negotiation bet-