Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

PÉTER LITERATUR CSIZMADIA
complex organisations providing sophisticated
services both on domestic and international
markets. These firms typically operate in
such industries as banking and insurance,
airlines, infrastructural services (gas or water
supply) and supermarket retailing and are
characterised by a well-developed internal
division of labour, sophisticated operational
processes and intensive use of technology,
especially Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT).
The third group of service providers is knowledgeintensive
business service firms (KIBS). KIBS
provide professional services, such as legal and
accounting services, management consultancy,
engineering and R&D activities, and play
a crucial role in creating and transferring
new knowledge and technologies. They rely
intensively on the expertise of their highly
skilled professional employees, often carry out
their activities in projects and are dependent
on close connections to their clients. The firms
belonging to this particularly rapidly growing
area of services are of crucial importance in
economic growth, as they provide intermediary
services to other actors of the economy and
constitute important inputs to the modern
production process (Salter-Tether 2006).
The knowledge-intensive business service sector
is, however, composed of firms that are very
diverse regarding characteristics of the services
they provide, their innovation capacities and
modes of manpower use. Partly due to this
heterogeneous composition, there is no widely
accepted definition of KIBS. According to the
very general definition by Tovoinen (2006:2),
KIBS are “expert companies that provide services
to other companies and organizations”. In contrast,
den Hertog (2000:505) provides a wider
definition that focuses on the characteristics
of knowledge used and created in the service
process and emphasises the importance of the
cooperation between the clients and service
providers: “Private companies or organizations
who rely heavily on professional knowledge,
i.e. knowledge or expertise related to a specific
(technical) discipline or (technical) functionaldomain
to supply intermediate products and
services that are knowledge based”. Miles et al
(1995) identified three basic characteristics of
KIBS: (1) they rely heavily upon professional
knowledge; (2) they either are themselves
primary sources of information and knowledge
or they use knowledge to produce intermediate
services for their clients’ production processes;
and (3) they are of competitive importance and
supply primarily to businesses. Based on these
characteristics, Miles et al (1995) defines KIBS
as “services that involved economic activities which
are intended to result in the creation, accumulation
or dissemination of knowledge”. In addition, the
authors differentiate between the so-called
“traditional professional services” (P-KIBS)
– intensive technology users (business and
management services, legal and accounting
activities, market research, etc.) – and “newtechnology-based
services” (T-KIBS) relying
on ICT and technical activities. The former
group of KIBS is sometimes referred to as
“operational business services” (Viitamo
2007). In their contribution, Müller
and Doloreux (2007) identified three
common elements in the various
classification attempts:
The term „business services” refers to
services that are provided in order to
satisfy the demands of firms and public
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