Knowledge Intensive Business Services

Edited by Marcela Miozzo, Professor in Innovation Studies, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester and Damian Grimshaw, Professor of Employment Studies, King's College London, UK

• Contents:1. Knowledge Intensive Business Services: Understanding Organizational Forms and the Role of Country Institutions Damian GrimshawPART I: KNOWLEDGE INTENSIVE BUSINESS SERVICES AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS2. Principles of Inter-organizational Relationships: An Integrated SurveyBart Nooteboom3. Outsourcing for Innovation: Systems of Innovation and the Role of Knowledge IntermediariesJeremy Howells4. Modularity and Innovation in Knowledge Intensive Business Services: IT Outsourcing in Germany and the UK Marcela Miozzo and Damian Grimshaw5. Make and/or Buy of IT-enabled Services Innovation: The Case of the US Express Delivery IndustryVolker Mahnke, Mikkel Lucas Overby and Serden ÖzcanPART II: KNOWLEDGE INTENSIVE BUSINESS SERVICES IN DIVERSE NATIONAL CONTEXTS6. Institutional Effects on the Market for IT Outsourcing: Analysing Clients, Suppliers and Staff Transfer in Germany and the UK Damian Grimshaw and Marcela Miozzo7. Two Types of Organizational Modularity: SAP, ERP Product Architecture and the German Tipping Point in the Make/Buy Decision for IT ServicesMark Lehrer8. Managing Competencies within Entrepreneurial Technologies: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Software Firms in Germany and the UKSteven Casper and Sigurt Vitols9. The Globalization of Management Consultancy Firms: Constraints and LimitationsGlenn Morgan, Andrew Sturdy and Sigrid QuackIndex

'The book provides convincing findings against the hypothesis of KIBS as a factor of cognitive convergence or loss of diversity within our economies. On the contrary, KIBS are active agents of divergence and there is no universal pattern of the nature and the evolution of KIBS, but national varieties. It also shows that in order to well understand the inter-organizational collaboration between KIBS and their clients and more generally KIBS dynamics and their performance, transaction cost economies and agent theory should be complemented by other perspectives such as knowledge-based approaches, network theories, modularity theories, etc. This book, which is strongly oriented towards both policy and theoretical questions, is a valuable addition to a body of literature which is still too scarce. No doubt that it will stimulate further research in this field. It is undoubtedly a high level, knowledge intensive service provision about knowledge intensive business services.'