Over the past three decades the Professional Service Firm (PSF) sector has emerged as one of the most rapidly growing, profitable, and significant in the global economy. In 2013 the accountancy, management consulting, legal, and architectural sectors alone generated revenues of US$ 1.6 trillion and employed 14 million people. PSFs play an important role in developing human capital, creating innovative business services, reshaping government institutions, establishing and interpreting the rules of financial markets, and setting legal, accounting and other professional standards. The study of PSFs can offer insights into the contemporary challenges facing organizations within the knowledge economy, and deepen understanding of more conventional organizations. Despite their significance, however, PSFs have until recently remained very much in the shadows of organizational and management research. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms marks the coming of age of PSF scholarship with a comprehensive and integrative exploration of current research and thinking on PSFs, featuring contributions from internationally renowned scholars in the fields of organizational and management studies. It is divided into three distinct sections - the professions, the firms, and the professionals that work within them - and covers subjects from governance and leadership to regulation, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Bringing together a broad range of empirical and theoretical perspectives, the Handbook offers many potentially important insights into the contemporary challenges of organizations in the knowledge economy and suggests new lines of inquiry that may shed further light on the activities and performance of PSFs and the professionals who work within them.

Over the past three decades the Professional Service Firm (PSF) sector has emerged as one of the most rapidly growing, profitable, and significant in the global economy. In 2013 the accountancy, management consulting, legal, and architectural sectors alone generated revenues of US$ 1.6 trillion and employed 14 million people. PSFs play an important role in developing human capital, creating innovative business services, reshaping government institutions, establishing and interpreting the rules of financial markets, and setting legal, accounting and other professional standards. The study of PSFs can offer insights into the contemporary challenges facing organizations within the knowledge economy, and deepen understanding of more conventional organizations. Despite their significance, however, PSFs have until recently remained very much in the shadows of organizational and management research. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms marks the coming of age of PSF scholarship with a comprehensive and integrative exploration of current research and thinking on PSFs, featuring contributions from internationally renowned scholars in the fields of organizational and management studies. It is divided into three distinct sections - the professions, the firms, and the professionals that work within them - and covers subjects from governance and leadership to regulation, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Bringing together a broad range of empirical and theoretical perspectives, the Handbook offers many potentially important insights into the contemporary challenges of organizations in the knowledge economy and suggests new lines of inquiry that may shed further light on the activities and performance of PSFs and the professionals who work within them.

ÔProfessional service firms are critical agents of contemporary economies and understanding them has become a central focus of recent scholarship. This very timely and well organized Handbook brings together several leading scholars who explore how we might think and theorize about professional service firms and their entrepreneurial behaviours. The Handbook will become a key source for the growing community of researchers in this area.Õ Ð Royston Greenwood, University of Alberta, Canada ÔFor too long, both researchers and practitioners have presumed that professional service firms follow the status quo when they should better understand how these professionals set the rules for globalization. This Handbook reminds us that professionals are as much the shock-troops of capitalism as the multinational corporations that they serve. As this Handbook shows, the leading firms successfully compete with each other by fostering entrepreneurship and innovation in order to service an institutional system that undergirds the international economy.Õ Ð Christopher McKenna, University of Oxford, UK Professional services are increasingly seen as an important foundation for future economic growth and prosperity. Yet research on innovative and entrepreneurial processes in professional services has been surprisingly scarce. This Handbook provides a collection of original contributions from leading scholars outlining the current stock of knowledge in the area as well as providing directions for further research. The expert contributors discuss entrepreneurship and innovation from a number of different perspectives, including the entrepreneurial professional team, the entrepreneurial firm and the institutional environment. The first part of the book looks at the challenges of entrepreneurship specific to the professional service firm while the second explores the creation and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities in the professional service team. Part III turns to the organization and Part IV to the management and growth of the entrepreneurial professional service firm. The final part discusses the interplay between professions, firms and the institutional environment. Researchers, scholars and PhD students in the areas of entrepreneurship and professional service firms along with advanced students of management will find this volume of great value.

The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism is a state-of-the-art reference work which maps out the current developments and debates around the sociology of the professions, and how they relate to management and organizations. Supported by an international contributor team specializing in the disciplines of organizational studies and sociology, the collection provides extensive coverage of this field of research. It brings together the core concepts and issues, and has chapters on all the key aspects of professions in both the public and private sectors, including issues of governance and regulation. The volume closes with a set of international case studies which provide valuable practical insights into the subject. This Companion will be an indispensable reference source for students, scholars and educators within the social sciences, especially within management, organizational studies and sociology. It will also be highly relevant for those working and studying in the area of professional education.

HANDBOOK OF DECISION MAKING This handbook offers a state-of-the-art overview of research and theories on decision making in organizations at the strategic level of analysis. Chapters are authored by leading international scholars, with some illustrative case vignettes from practitioners. Each contributor was selected for his/her special knowledge of the field. The Handbook addresses key questions confronting the decision making research of the past and the present, offers critiques, and suggests future research directions. Topics covered emphasize the classic decision theory perspectives while also incorporating recent insights from the fields of strategic choice, risk & uncertainty, scenario planning and complexity theory, with a broad social science perspective on the disciplinary roots of decision theory in economics, politics, and social theory. This is a landmark reference volume for the field, offering scholars and practitioners: Comprehensive, but accessible, coverage of classic and recent developments Chapters by established international experts Case analyses illustrating practical consequences of theories Guide to new research directions and theory

It is often claimed that we live in an expert society, a society where more and more individuals take expert roles in increasingly narrow fields. In contrast to more traditional experts most of these new experts lack generally accepted mechanisms for the certification and legitimation of their expertise. This book focuses on these new as well as established experts and the efforts undertaken to secure and legitimate their expertise. We view these efforts as organizing attempts and study them on four different levels – the society, the market, the organization and the individual. Based on empirical studies on these four levels of analysis, The Organization of the Expert Society makes the argument that current organizing initiatives in the expert society are based in an objectifying view of expertise that risks concealing and downplaying key aspects of expertise. Well-intended organizing initiatives in the expert society thus run the risk of promoting ignorance rather than securing expertise. Focusing on a current, general and global phenomenon, the rise and organization of an expert society. The Organization of the Expert Society will be key reading for scholars, academics and policy makers in the management fields of Organizational Theory, Management Consulting, Organizations & Society, Critical Management Studies as well as the disciplines of Sociology, Political Science and Social Anthropology.

This book reveals the power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of professional organizations. Drawing on the latest academic theory, and based on interviews with over 500 senior professionals, it analyses how professionals come together to create 'leadership'. It explains how change happens and why leaders so often fail.

The Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Innovation places humans, their acts, practices, processes and fantasies at the core of innovation. Bringing together some of the worldÕs leading thinkers, academics and professionals, both established and emerging, this multidisciplinary book provides a comprehensive picture of the vibrant and engaging field of organizational and managerial innovation. The contributors present organizational and managerial innovation as a complex concept underpinned by varied ontological and epistemological traditions and disciplines. They reveal that it is something that exists and occurs at multiple levels of analysis, and from multiple zones of experience Ð the experience of managers, workers, psychologists, philosophers and economists. This innovative and engaging Handbook will be an essential resource for researchers, practitioners and students alike with an interest in the role of innovation in organizations.