Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between Business-to-business professional service firms (B2B PSFs) customer cooperation capability (CCC) and its financial perfonnance. This study explores how deep and broad expeit and customer knowledge assist PSFs to enhance CCC and increase financial performance. Design/methodology/approach - A multiple informant survey was designed and administered to B2B PSFs' managers in Taiwan. Findings - The results indicate that customer and expert knowledge improve PSFs' CCC and that CCC has a positive U-shaped relationship with financial performance. Importantly, the ability to control for the efficiency of customer cooperation moderates the U-shaped relationship between CCC and financial performance by diminishing the negative effect of low levels of CCC. Originality/value - The contribution of this study rests on the theory developed and empirical support disclosing the complex relationship between PSFs' CCC and financial performance. The study further contributes to the literatW"e by presenting different effect of deep and broad expert and customer knowledge on development of CCC. The study extends the literatlll'e by introducing control for efficiency of customer cooperation as a mechanism that has the capacity to compensate for lower levels of CCC.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	financial perfonnance, professional service firms, control for efficiency, customer cooperation, knowledge breadth, knowledge depth
Research Division:	Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
Research Group:	Marketing
Research Field:	Marketing Management (incl. Strategy and Customer Relations)
Objective Division:	Economic Framework
Objective Group:	Management and Productivity
Objective Field:	Marketing
UTAS Author:	Siahtiri, V (Ms Vida Siahtiri)
ID Code:	122400
Year Published:	2017
Web of Science® Times Cited:	6
Deposited By:	TSBE
Deposited On:	2017-11-13
Last Modified:	2018-05-24
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