Introduction: Knowledge Management in Professional Service Firms

Abstract

Knowledge represents a highly valuable organizational resource. Organizations should pay careful attention to how they manage knowledge. Professional service firms (PSFs) have much to teach other organizations about knowledge management. In the course of the 1990s these assertions progressed from being novel ideas to becoming well-worn cliches. Learned academic journals and airport bookshelves are now crowded with works which seek to define the nature of knowledge and identify how it can be managed. Librarians and IT support staff, traditionally marginalized within organizations, have found themselves re-branded as ‘key information resources’ and ‘chief knowledge officers’. Accountants and consulting firms, typically relegated to a professional services ghetto within the management literature, have been thrust into the foreground as exemplars of best practice in the field of knowledge management. Such is the interest in the topic of knowledge management that a backlash is almost certainly imminent. Bertels and Savage (1998) have suggested that ‘after three years of intense fluff, the lemmings will be on to their next topic, without ever having really mined the subject of knowledge’ (p. 7). This special issue of Human Relations seeks to make a lasting contribution to our understanding of the role of knowledge within organizations. It brings together researchers from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives who are united by their common interest in the management of knowledge within PSFs. Why has knowledge management become such a ‘hot’ topic in recent years? Some might argue that it is the result of effective marketing by consulting firms (see Suddaby and Greenwood in this issue). Others suggest that academics are inherently attracted to ideationalist theories because, as