A life‐cycle perspective of professionalism in services

• Date: 01 March 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2016.03.003
• Author: Jie J. Zhang,Benjamin Lawrence,Janelle Heineke
• Published date: 01 March 2016

A life-cycle perspective of professionalism in services

Benjamin Lawrence

a

,

*

, Jie J. Zhang

b

, Janelle Heineke

c

a

Cornell University, School of Hotel Administration, 565b Statler Hall, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA

b

The University of Vermont, Grossman School of Business, 205 Kalkin Hall, 55 Colchester Avenue, Burlington, VT 05405, USA

c

Boston University, Questrom School of Business, 669A, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA

article info

Article history:

Available online 29 March 2016

Accepted by Mikko Ketokivi

abstract

In this article, we develop a professional service life cycle model to describe the changes in professional

work over time. We explore the drivers of these changes through an in-depth longitudinal case study of

one specific professional service eLeadership in Energy &Environmental Design (LEED) consulting. We

focus on understanding the evolutionary path of LEED consulting work as a result of its knowledge base,

community and response to market and technological forces. Case evidence demonstrates an inherent

tension between innovation and commodification resulting from multiple demands through various

developmental stages. The life cycle model has important implications for value-creation in professional

service operations management. First, it broadens the theoretical investigation of professional services to

consider all processes and people along the professional continuum efrom most innovative to

commodified. Coordinated effort along the professional continuum is the key to delivering both effec-

tiveness and efficiency. Second, proactively managing the transitions along the evolutionary path is both

possible and desirable. Standardization and specialization improve talent allocation and boost future

innovation. We suggest future opportunities to test and enrich the model.

©2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Professional services constitute a major pillar in today's

knowledge economy (Drucker,1969; Hayes, 2002), both in terms of

their contribution to the economy (JOM CFP “Professional Service

Operations Management,”Lewis et al., 2013) and their fast growth

(Goodale et al., 2008). Given the rapid changes in today's business

and technology environment, managing professional services is

becoming increasingly difficult. These changes are not new; they

are the result of forces that continuously shape the services and

work we consider professional. Take law, a widely-studied profes-

sional service. The unrelenting decline in law school enrollment

and the dismal career prospects of law graduates in the US have

made headlines for some time (Bronner, 2013; Olson and Segal,

2014). Law scholars have pointed to two primary forces driving

these changes: (1) continuously decreasing knowledge barriers,

facilitated by the deregulation of the profession, have allowed

people with less or no legal training (e.g., paralegals or accountants)

to do the work once completed by lawyers; (2) legal knowledge

embedded in computer programs has reduced the need for human

workers (Campbell et al., 2012; Merritt, 2015).

Professional service organizations (PSOs) are under constant

pressure from value-seeking clients to provide faster, cheaper and

better service (Christensen and Anthony, 2004). For instance, the

Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) is transforming the

nature of professional service work through sophisticated cognitive

analysis of complex data (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2012). As a

result of these market and technological forces, significant changes

have been observed across the work of radiologists, pharmacists,

professors, accountants and architects (Cohn, 2013; Ford, 2015;

Meisenhelder, 2013).

Although research examining professional services and pro-

fessions has acknowledged such change as an underlying theme

(see Greenwood and Lachman, 1996), the field of operations man-

agement has yet to develop models that capture these dynamics.

The field has called for a deep understanding of professional service

operations management (PSOM). Pressing issues include how

technology is disrupting traditional models, the key drivers of

change in PSOM, and the adaptation of professional services to

different market segments (Lewis et al., 2013). Our study responds

to the call by presenting a dynamic model that addresses internal

and external drivers and incorporates both innovative and

*Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: bcl5@cornell.edu (B. Lawrence), jie.zhang@uvm.edu

(J.J. Zhang), jheineke@bu.edu (J. Heineke).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Operations Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jom

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2016.03.003

0272-6963/©2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal of Operations Management 42-43 (2016) 25e38