Large transnational professional service firms (PSFs) are highly influential in today's global economy because they underpin the integrity of financial markets, enable complex international transactions, and deliver ideas and advice to the world's largest corporations and governments. They sell...

Accounts of the spread of management ideas emphasizing the role of ‘supply-side’ actors underplay the active role recipients play in translating them into new and different forms. Comparing firms undergoing a similar process and looking at how a specific event unfolded, this paper aims to...

This paper examines the proposition that the traditional archetype of the professional partnership is said to have changed into a more ‘business-like’ entity, the managed professional business. It broadens the restricted case sample base on which much of the evidence has been adduced, by...

The adoption of the incorporated form of ownership in preference to partnership is linked to the shift to a more modem organizational archetype in professional firms. Yet existing empirical research offers insufficient insight into the organizational processes of this transformation in different...

Despite the frequent assertion that knowledge management is an important strategic activity, there have been relatively few empirical studies of the processes involved in this, particularly in knowledge intensive firms. The paradox inherent to codification projects is that they are dependent on...

This paper investigates the reasons for and implications of the recent merger between three of the largest unions in the retail finance sector, creating UNIFI. Recent union mergers have been explained by environmental changes adversely affecting membership and finances. These prompt leaders to...

Existing theories have recognised the importance of expert knowledge in the formation and survival of professional service firms (PSFs), such as accounting and consulting firms, but have not fully explained its role. We argue that knowledge is a key determinant of the organisational structure...

A shift away from "up-or-out," the conventional promotion system in professional service firms, has been explained as part of a wider set of changes in internal labor market arrangements and management methods. This is investigated empirically in a sample of large partnerships in one profession....

In recent years the traditional method of distributing profits on the basis of seniority in professional firms has come under attack because of its poor incentive properties. Using data on large law firms, this paper examines the extent to which new forms of profit‐sharing based on individual...