ABSTRACT
Introduction The globalization and even the viability of service firms at the beginning of the twenty-first century clearly depends on the ability of these firms to produce, transfer, and guard knowledge that they use in providing services to clients. From the simplest financial services that a bank provides to a foreign client or a foreign affiliate of a domestic client, to the most complex management consulting project that involves extensive interaction between the service provider and the client firm, each of these situations requires the service provider to take specialized knowledge and apply it to a client's needs, while trying to retain the relevant skills, structures, and other appropriable aspects of that knowledge. In short, the service firms rely fundamentally on their ability to produce the knowledge that they sell to clients, and equally on their ability to utilize and protect that knowledge from competitors. Knowledge is the key competitive advantage in the service sector.
