Exploring small manufacturing firms’ process of accessing external expertise
通过定性研究，描述了小型制造企业获取外部专业知识的五种模式，揭示其行为与专家服务采购过程的差异，对研究小企业发展和知识管理的学者有参考价值。
The ability to access external expertise is crucial to small firms’ development, yet research examining the purchasing process of expert services by small firms is scarce. External expertise is defined here as knowledge or competence, that is relatively rare to the client firm, provided by an external party. Hence, external expertise includes professional business services as well as business advice. The paper reports on a qualitative study of small manufacturing firms’ behaviour in accessing external expertise. Five distinct patterns by which small firms come to use external expertise are described, demonstrating how small firms’ actions differ from the expert service purchasing process. The firms are found to acquire expert resources opportunistically and reactively as well as by calculated or routine purchasing, and by utilising informal sources of expertise.