Mehdi Boussebaa

This paper contributes to research on control in multinational enterprises (MNEs) by considering the case of global professional service firms (GPSFs). Drawing on fieldwork in four firms, it argues that GPSFs are seeking greater control over their subsidiaries in order to provide integrated cross-national services to global clients and, in the process, are becoming subject to a center-subsidiary tension similar to that observed in more conventional MNEs. However, and importantly, the paper also argues that the center-subsidiary tension operates differently in GPSFs. This is because central control in this particular context is pursued by not only headquarters but also subsidiaries based in core economies where major global clients are headquartered. Such polycentric control leads to the center-subsidiary tension expressing itself along not just the vertical (headquarters-subsidiary) axis but also the horizontal (inter-subsidiary) one and, in particular, along core-periphery lines. The research and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

This chapter examines the internationalization of professional service firms (PSFs), outlining its drivers, varying forms and organizational implications. We argue that conventional internationalization theory does not apply straightforwardly to PSFs. We identify three key sources of PSF distinctiveness – governance, clients and knowledge – and show how these generate not only differences between PSFs and other types of organizations but also heterogeneity amongst PSFs themselves. Based on this, we identify four different forms of PSF internationalization – network, project, federal and transnational – and note that scholarly interest has mostly focused on the last two of these. We also highlight change towards the transnational model as an underlying theme in PSF research. We find little convincing evidence that this model has been successfully implemented and argue that, in general, PSFs are better understood as federal structures controlled by a few powerful offices than as transnational enterprises. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

The spread and use of English as the lingua franca of international business – ‘corporate englishization’ – has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years but the focus has mostly been on the communication benefits and challenges of using English as a shared language inside multinationals. In this paper, we examine how English is used externally in the provision of business services and apply a postcolonial perspective to frame our analysis. Drawing on fieldwork in India within the call center units of two outsourcing organizations serving Anglo-American firms, we show how corporate englishization (1) relies on, and contributes to producing, comprador managerial cadres; (2) serves to construct a transnational intra-linguistic hierarchy of power and privilege; and (3) undercuts its own effectiveness by simultaneously eliminating and maintaining the alterity of the ‘Other’ through pro-cesses of mimicry. We thus show how corporate englishization does not merely overcome or, conversely, worsen transnational communication problems; it also (re-)produces colonial-style power relations between the ‘Anglosphere’ and the ‘Rest’. Our analysis deepens our understanding of corporate englishization and opens a new avenue for postcolonial research on the role of language in inter-national business. Our analysis also advances the field of postcolonial organization studies and has implications for international business scholarship more generally.

References Chatterjee, P. (1993) The Nation and Its Fragments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton. Das, G. (2002) India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution From Independence to the Global Information Age. London: Anchor. Ganesh, S. (2007) 'Outsourcing as ...

THE MYTH OF THE GLOBAL MANAGEMENT CONSULTING FIRM Mehdi Boussebaa Department of Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour Warwick Business School University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom [email protected] ...

In the last few decades, global professional service firms (GPSFs) have emerged as major corporate players who not only provide services to clients worldwide but also engage in a range of governance issues that cut across national borders. Yet research on the role of professionals in transnational governance has paid little attention to GPSFs as analytically distinct actors, the main focus generally being on ‘the professions’. Importantly, the relevant research has tended to overlook the global power asymmetries and unequal exchange relationships that GPSF professionals (re)produce as they engage in transnational governance issues – externally (in the world economy) but also internally (within their own organizations). This is in part due to an underlying conception of transnational governance in which processes of cultural diffusion, isomorphism and adaptation are given primacy. This chapter aims to help in addressing these limitations. I argue that, in attempting to serve clients internationally, GPSFs are institutionalizing internal hierarchies that mirror the long-standing core/periphery hierarchy of the world capitalist system. In advancing this argument, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the role of GPSFs in transnational governance and, importantly, how the professionals within them come to (re)produce relations of domination and exploitation as the global level.