An investigation of knowledge brokering during service encounters

Abstract

Service encounters present excellent opportunities for obtaining and exchanging so called tacit and explicit knowledge between customers and organisations. Recently, the role of frontline employees as knowledge brokers between organisations and their customers has received attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite the significant role played by frontline employees in obtaining knowledge from customers and sharing it during service encounters, there is a lack of research that provides a comprehensive framework intended to explain their role during such engagements. Following an extensive literature review we developed a research model that identifies (1) the role of frontline employees as knowledge brokers for customers and organisations and (2) the factors that influence their roles as knowledge brokers during service encounters. In total, 30 semi-structured interviews with different informants (i.e. managers & employees) from three top commercial banks in Jordan (X, Y, & Z) were administered through three case studies. We adopted a qualitative ‘interpretative’ methodological approach to the analysis of the empirical data. Our findings from an evidence-based analysis suggest that the knowledge brokering engaged in by frontline employees during service encounters is affected by four sets of factors (organisational–level, individual-level, technology-level, & knowledge–level).