London and Frankfurt in Europe�s evolving financial centre network.

The launch of the Euro and the location of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt was initially seen as a threat to London�s pre-eminent position in European financial geographies. This paper explains why this was in fact not the case. The paper is therefore divided into two sections. Firstly it reviews the literatures that help to explain financial geographies. It is argued that we need to move away from investigating attribute properties such as financial turnover and instead examine the role of networks and interdependencies in producing financial geographies. Secondly, it identifies London�s dominance and Frankfurt�s growth as a complementary centre through quantitative analysis and then explains how European networks and interdependencies produce this based on insights from interviews with investment bankers and insurance institution workers in the two cities

Local-global geographies of tacit knowledge production in London and New York's advertising and law professional service firms

For economic geographers interest in the role of knowledge in economic activities and a ‘knowledge economy’ raises questions about how geography enables (and disables) learning and whether the production of tacit knowledge has exclusively local or multiple overlapping geographies. This thesis engages with this debate and considers its relevance to the geographies of tacit knowledge production (learning) in the employees of global advertising and law professional service firms operating in London and New York City. It begins by critically engaging with theories of knowledge, learning and their geographies to develop a spatially sensitive approach to examine learning. Such an analysis is then applied in order to understand the geographies of knowledge production in global advertising and law firms. Three themes are addressed. First, why is tacit knowledge important in the work of these firms? Second, what are the key practices involved in producing such knowledge? Third, what are the geographies of these practices and how important is the local scale (the communities within London and New York) and the global scale (the communities stretched between offices of the global firms studied) for knowledge production. Research findings from semistructured interviews highlight the multiple geographies of learning in the firms studied at both local and global scales. This is enabled by a number of ‘embedding’ forces that ‘smooth’ the learning process and that have multiple geographies themselves. It is therefore argued that a relational and topological analysis that traces the learning networks across space most usefully provides insights into the geographies of knowledge production. This reveals that the ‘networks and spaces of learning’ are fluid and transcend spatial scales when suitable constructed

New insights into the internationalization of producer services:Organizational strategies and spatial economies for global headhunting firms

This paper uses the exemplar of global headhunting firms to provide new insights into the intricacies of internationalization and related ‘spatial economies’ of producer services in the world economy. In particular, we unpack the complex relationships between the organisational rationale for, the selected mode of, and future benefits gained by internationalization, as headhunting firms seek and create new geographical markets. We achieve this through an analysis of headhunting firm-specific case study data that details the evolving way such firms organize their differential strategic growth (organic, merger and acquisition, and alliances/network) and forms (wholly-owned, networked or hybrid). We also highlight how, as elite labour market intermediaries, headhunters are important, yet understudied, actors within the (re)production of a ‘softer’, ‘knowledgeable’ capitalism. Our argument, exemplified through detailed mapping of the changing geographies of headhunting firms between 1992 and 2005, demonstrates the need for complex and blurred typologies of internationalization and similarly complex internationalization theory

The Fearful and Anxious Professional : Partner Experiences of Working in the Financialized Professional Services Firm

This work was supported by a PhD studentship provided to Scott Allan by the UK Economic and Social Research Council.Peer reviewedPostprin

Inserting professionals and professional organizations in studies of wrongdoing : the nature, antecedents and consequences of professional misconduct

Professional misconduct has become seemingly ubiquitous in recent decades. However, to date there has been little sustained effort to theorize the phenomenon of professional misconduct, how this relates to professional organizations, and how this may contribute to broader patterns of corruption and wrongdoing. In response to this gap, in this contribution we discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of analyses that focus on the nature, antecedents and consequences of professional misconduct. In particular, we discuss how the nature of professional misconduct can be quite variegated and nuanced, how boundaries between and within professions can be either too weak or too strong and lead to professional misconduct, and how the consequences of professional misconduct can be less straightforward than normally assumed. We also illuminate how some important questions about professional misconduct are still pending, including: how we define its different organizational forms; how it is instigated by the changing nature of professional boundaries; and how its consequences are responded to in professional organizations and society more widely

Global Law Firms: Globalization and Organizational Spaces of Cross-Border Legal Work

The aim of this paper is not, however, to generically chart the rise of the global law firm; others have already done this. Instead, our interest lies in better understanding how existing geographies of globalization of law and lawyers, alongside the new geographies of professional partnership and legal work, have created opportunities and challenges for global law firms. More specifically, we seek to unravel the complexities of: (a) the factors driving the presence and absence of global law firms in different cities; and (b) the way that law firms have been reconfigured to operate as spatially distributed organizations present in cities as far apart as New York and Tokyo and London and Hong Kong. As we show, the decision to be there and the intricacies of operating as a global organization are both issues that have unique peculiarities when examined in relation to law and law firms, something that prevents generalization from existing studies of other professional industries. To date, however, limited attention has been paid to these organizational peculiarities. This paper seeks to fill this research void, something that is significant because the peculiarities of how global law firms operate provide the foundations upon which allow the likes of Clifford Chance to become lubricators of global capitalism through transnational lawyering and lawmaking

How to cope with mobility expectations in academia: individual travel strategies of tenured academics at Ghent University, Flanders

The production and exchange of knowledge are inextricably linked to different compulsions to corporeal proximity and therefore travel. As primary producers and transferors of knowledge, academics are no exception to this rule, and their compulsions seem to be further propelled by institutional discourses regarding the alleged virtues of “internationalization.” Tenured academics, moreover, have a high degree of independence and can therefore easily choose how to cope with compulsions and constraints to internationalize. However, the business-travel literature has paid scant attention to academics and their individual contexts. In an effort to rectify this situation, this paper explores a travel dataset of tenure-track academics (N=870) working at Ghent University. The insights emerging from this analysis are then contextualized by complementing them with in-depth interviews of tenured academics (N=23) at the same institution. This paper argues, first, that varying compulsions and constraints at home and abroad lead to distinct non-travel and travel-intensive academic roles. And second, that academics who have difficulties coping, try to rationalize their corporeal travel behaviour and their mobility behaviour to meet the needs and expectations to internationalize. These strategies give an indication of how travel-related working practices can become more efficient and sustainable in the future

Accommodating machine learning algorithms in professional service firms

Machine learning algorithms, as one form of artificial intelligence (AI), are significant for professional work because they create the possibility for some predictions, interpretations and judgements that inform decision making to be made by algorithms. However, little is known about whether it is possible to transform professional work to incorporate machine learning whilst also addressing negative responses from professionals whose work is changed by inscrutable algorithms. Through original empirical analysis of the effects of machine learning algorithms on the work of accountants and lawyers, this paper identifies the role of accommodating machine learning algorithms in professional service firms. Accommodating machine learning algorithms involves strategic responses that both justify adoption in the context of the possibilities and new contributions of machine learning algorithms and respond to the algorithms’ limitations and opaque and inscrutable nature. The analysis advances understanding of the processes that enable or inhibit the cooperative adoption of AI in PSFs and develops insights relevant when examining the long-term impacts of machine learning algorithms as they become ever more sophisticated. </jats:p

Organizational professionalism in globalizing law firms.

Are the challenges of globalization, technology and competition exercising a dramatic impact on professional practice whilst, in the process, compromising traditional notions of professionalism, autonomy and discretion? This paper engages with these debates and uses original, qualitative empirical data to highlight the vast areas of continuity that exist even the largest globalizing law firms. Whilst it is undoubted that growth in the size of firms and their globalization bring new challenges, these are resolved in ways that are sensitive to professional values and interests. In particular, a commitment to professional autonomy and discretion still characterises the way in which these firms operate and organize themselves. This situation is explained in terms of the development of an organizational model of professionalism, whereby the large organization is increasingly emerging as a primary locus of professionalization and whereby professional priorities and objectives are increasingly supported by organizational logics, systems and initiatives

Analysing the changing landscape of European financial centres: the role of financial products and the case of Amsterdam

The turn of the twenty-first century saw the re-emergence of debates about the reconfiguration of European financial geographies and the role of stock exchange mergers in this process. There has been, however, no systematic attempt to date to analyse such changes. This paper proposes a specific conceptual framework to explore these issues. It uses a product-based analysis to examine, in the context of recent stock exchange mergers, the factors affecting the competitiveness of a financial centre. It argues that it is important to understand three intertwined influences – product complementarities, the nature of local epistemic communities, and regulation – and their contingent effects on change. This is exemplified by a tentative application of the framework to the case of Amsterdam in order to better understand its recent decline in competitiveness as a European financial centre