ABSTRACT
Professional services provide a new business context to study the acquisition, retention, and transfer of knowledge. Professional services (i.e., consultants, engineers, lawyers, etc.) use their knowledge base to develop business solutions to solve client problems. Solutions are often tailored to clients’ needs and the skill set needed
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 367 Context and Research Questions ........................................................................... 368 Background Literature ........................................................................................... 369
Knowledge Depreciation ................................................................................... 370 Knowledge Diffusion ........................................................................................ 371
Models and Results ................................................................................................ 372 Firm-Level Learning Curve............................................................................... 372
Firm-Level Depreciation of Knowledge ....................................................... 373 Inter-Departmental Knowledge Transfer .......................................................... 374
Symmetric Transfer of Knowledge between Departments ........................... 374 Asymmetric Transfer of Knowledge between Departments ........................ 375
Discussion .............................................................................................................. 376 Firm-Level Learning and Depreciation ............................................................. 376 Department-Level Diffusion ............................................................................. 377
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 378 References .............................................................................................................. 378
for any given project is determined by the project context and complexity.* The success of professional service ¥rms depends on how well they manage the knowledge that they accrue, and how ef¥ciently this accrued knowledge is shared across the ¥rm in order to solve clients’ problems.
