Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the crucial initiation stage of service innovation in professional service firms (PSFs) by individual professionals and the implications for knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach-The paper builds theory, based on an in-depth review of the relevant literature. The developed theory is illustrated with a case study of PricewaterhouseCoopers AG (PwC), one of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms. Formal and informal interviews about innovation, learning in client interactions, and knowledge management were held with more than 70 employees of PwC over a three-year period. Findings-The paper shows that entrepreneurial opportunity recognition is a suitable framework to explain the initiation of service innovation in PSFs. Prior knowledge, alertness and search are identified as bases for the recognition of opportunities and hence the initiation of service innovation in PSFs. Therefore, the author argues that knowledge management should raise the alertness of individual professionals to engage in opportunity recognition and also provide a fruitful environment to enable active search for opportunities on the basis of relevant prior knowledge at hand. Practical implications-The findings aim to help managers in PSFs to understand better the initiation of innovation in their companies and enable fostering of innovation through the application of dedicated knowledge management initiatives. Originality/value-Previous research has not yet taken an in-depth look at the initiation stage of service innovation by individual professionals in PSFs. In this paper, entrepreneurial opportunity recognition is presented and applied for the first time as a framework to explain the activity of professionals in the initiation of service innovation in PSFs. In doing this, the paper also contributes to the understanding of the under-researched corporate entrepreneurial role of professionals in PSFs.

Dialogues between professionals and their clients are at the core of relationship marketing of professional service firms. To nurture dialogues, professionals need to extend the scope of the dialogue to new issues that impact the client organization's performance. We develop and examine (N ¼ 431) a model grounded in the theory of planned behavior to highlight factors that impact the willingness of professionals to initiate the extension of client dialogues. Three main results are found. First, affective and instrumental attitudes are distinct and different motivational antecedents that simultaneously impact willingness. Second, affective and instrumental attitude are intermediate psychological considerations shaped by extrinsic rewards, reciprocal relationships, and client relationship quality. Third, organizational pressure operates indirectly by instilling a personal professional norm to extend client dialogues.

Purpose -This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of relationship marketing in professional services firms (PSF). The process of dialogical interaction with clients is central to relationship marketing. However, client dialogue may fall dormant if not properly cultivated by employees of the PSF, that is, by professionals. This inductive study aims to investigate how professionals sustain a fruitful client dialogue by proactively introducing additional client problems to the dialogue. Design/methodology/approach -Extensive field research with a "Big Four" accounting firm and 11 client companies inductively generates a framework to describe how professionals engage in proactive diagnosis of client problems to introduce these problems to the client dialogue. The framework is grounded in 49 focused interviews with professionals and client managers, as well as supplementary interviews, observations, and firm documents. Findings -The suggested framework consists of the components of proactive diagnosis (information-seeking and influence strategies), a trade-off that professionals must make among these components, several enablers of and constraints on proactive diagnosis, and key client concerns that professionals must address to introduce additional client problems. Originality/value -Despite the importance of client dialogue for relationship marketing, recommendations about how professionals can sustain client dialogue over time remain limited. This study describes proactive diagnosis as one potential approach. It contributes to literature on relationship marketing in PSFs by showing how proactive diagnosis helps professionals overcome the problem of dormancy in client dialogue, complements personal selling, and extends the role of diagnosis beyond paid client assignments into the pre-selling phase.

No abstract