The Influence Of Service Modularization On Customer Responsiveness In Professional Service Firms

Due to the modularization, professional service firms develops rapidly in recent years. The modularization helps professional service firms change its service philosophy, to focus on service quality as well as service efficiency. However, existing literatures mainly talk about the mechanism of the modularization from either production flexibility or knowledge management. As a result, many phenomenons in professional service firms cannot be well explained. On the one hand, it is difficult to promote customer responsiveness by improving production flexibility of professional service firms. On the other hand, scholars still have different comments on the role knowledge management plays between the modularization and customer responsiveness.First of all, the paper reveals what service modularization is based on two cases, and explores how it improve customer responsiveness by affecting individual and organizational knowledge codification after literature review. Secondly, the paper determines the modularization scale of professional service firms, and tests partly mediating effect of knowledge codification through the obtained survey data. Finally, the paper tests the moderating effect of organizational integration, and explores how bureaucracy and function integration work by influencing the service modularization, which plays a role in knowledge codification of individual and enterprise.The research results and theoretical contributions are as follows:(1) The paper defines service modularization in professional service firms based on the dependence between professional knowledge and service phase.Service modularization in professional service firms is the division and reconstruction of professional knowledge and service phase, to reduce and standard dependences of professional knowledge and service phase, so that the service is divided into modules which depends on certain professional knowledge and certain service phase. The definition based on both professional knowledge in production view and service phase in process view is helpful to explain a lot of phenomenons in professional service firms and enlightened to integrate the theory of the modularization.(2) Service modularization influences customer responsiveness by individual knowledge structuring and organizational knowledge explicitization.In individual level, service modularization influences customer responsiveness by knowledge structuring instead of knowledge explicitization. In organizational level, service modularization influences customer responsiveness by knowledge explicitization instead of knowledge structuring. The result proves service modularization influences customer responsiveness by knowledge codification, which enriches the theory of the modularization in knowledge view.The result also opens the black box of mediating effect of knowledge codification in individual and organizational levels, which explains comments in the literature.(3) Organizational integration influences the relationship between module autonomy and knowledge codification.Organizational integration influences the relationship between knowledge codification and module autonomy instead of interface standardization. On the one hand, the tighter bureaucracy integration is, the less influence on individual knowledge structuring. On the other hand, the tighter function integration is, the more influence on organizational knowledge explicitization. The result explores when individual knowledge codifies, and when organizational knowledge codifies, which Enhances the understanding of contingent influence of service modularization.