Struggling to organize across national borders
The case of global resource management in professional service firms
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9890232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mehdi Boussebaa (0000-0002-4283-2468, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 829-850 |
| Publication date | 2009-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0018726709104544 |
| OpenAlex | W1659167483 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 36 |
A growing body of research has challenged the commonly accepted view that multinationals have evolved into globally integrated networks, demonstrating instead that such organizations are sites of conflict between competing rationalities emerging from distinctive national institutional contexts. However, this research has neglected professional service firms (PSFs) in spite of them often being held as exemplars of the integrated network model. This article redresses this imbalance by focusing, in particular, on how PSFs seek to coordinate the horizontal flow of their human resources as a mechanism of inter-unit knowledge sharing. Drawing upon interviews in four PSFs, I show that these organizations have developed resource management systems that cannot simply be reduced to national institutional contexts. However, I also demonstrate that the process of resource management is subject to inter-unit conflicts that undermine its raison d'être. I argue that these tensions are symptomatic of both the Anglo-American model of multinational management and cross-national differences in market conditions
Business · Human resource management · Knowledge management · Multinational corporation · Political science · Process (computing · Public relations · Resource (disambiguation · Service (business · Shared resource · Subject (documents · Unit (ring theory · Computer Science · Innovation and Knowledge Management · Management and Organizational Studies · Marketing · Outsourcing and Supply Chain Management
Unpacking the problem of research access(es)
Whither national subsidiaries? The need to refocus international management research on structures and processes that matter
Neo-colonial dynamics in global professional service firms
Enacting global careers
Pushing the frontiers of critical international business studies
From cultural differences to cultural globalization
Guiding Change as President of the Board of Trustees
Unsettling West-centrism in the study of professional service firms
Reconstructing institutional complexity in practice
Global ends, local means
Towards an integrated framework of professional partnership performance
Practices and knowing in transnational knowledge-intensive service provision
Management Consultancy and Banking in an Era of Globalization
The World's Newest Profession
The Consultancy Process — An Insecure Business?
The hypermodern MNC—A heterarchy?
Institutional Entrepreneurship In Mature Fields
Varieties of Capitalism
Managing talent across national borders
Managing across borders
The contested space of multinationals
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,75 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2024 (15) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |