Management consultancy and investment banking have been held up as industries at the forefront of contemporary globalization. Using an inter-disciplinary approach ranging across economics, economic geography, sociology and management studies, Andrew Jones analyzes the nature of globalization within business service transnational corporations in these sectors. Using qualitative research with leading business managers, he focuses on the social and cultural nature of 'doing' global service business in an era of increasing integration of the world economy.

Are migrant workers needed to 'do the jobs that locals will not do' or are they simply a more exploitable labour force? Do they have a better 'work ethic' or are they less able to complain? Is migrant labour the solution to 'skills shortages' or actually part of the problem? This book provides a comprehensive framework for analysing the demand for migrant workers in high-income countries. It demonstrates how a wide range of government policies, often unrelated to migration, contribute to creating a growing demand for migrant labour. This demand can persist even during economic downturns. The book includes quantitative and qualitative analyses of the changing role of migrants in the UK economy. The empirical chapters include in-depth examinations of the nature of staff shortages and the use of migrant workers in six sectors: health; social care; hospitality; food production; construction; and financial services. The book' s conceptual framework and empirical findings are of importance to academic and policy debates about labour immigration in all high-income countries. The final chapter presents a comparative analysis of research and policy approaches to assessing labour shortages in the UK and the US. It examines the potential lessons of the UK's Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) for current debates about labour shortages and immigration reform in the US. The book will be of significant interest to policy-makers, stakeholders, academics and students.

Management consultants are typically seen as key mediators in the flow of management ideas. And yet little is known about exactly what happens when they work together with clients, behind closed doors in consulting projects. Do they really innovate or simply legitimate existing knowledge? This book presents research from a three year long 'fly-on-the-wall study' of consulting projects and challenges our taken for granted view of consultancy. It draws on and integrates theories of knowledge and social boundaries to reveal a picture of complex and shifting insider-outsider relationships. Here, the outsider or expert status of consultants in relation to their clients cannot be assumed in their day-to-day project interactions. Different actors, roles, and types of knowledge are involved in an interactive and dynamic process where various boundaries are constructed, reinforced, negotiated and transformed. The chapters selectively explore these dynamics, revealing the importance of boundary complexity, the role of humour and challenge in often tense relationships, and the importance of shared knowledge domains such as sector knowledge. This in-depth analysis of inter-organizational project teams also covers a wide range of consultancy contexts, drawing on cases studies which include: * a US-based strategy firm and a multinational client, * the public and private sectors, * a sole practitioner consultant, * IT implementation in financial services. The book is important for all those with an interest in management consultancy, project working and management knowledge as well as in innovation/change, inter-organisational relations, boundaries and professional services. The authors include some of the leading research experts on management consultancy as well as a former management consultant and current expert in management learning.

This book provides an original framework to examine how professionals control transnational issues, commonly considered the concern of organizations.

Management consultants of various kinds play an important role in the world of business, and within other types of organization. The Oxford Handbook on Management Consulting is a comprehensive overview of thinking and research on management consultancy with contributions from leading international scholars. The first section provides an account of the historical developments in management consulting research, and how current thinking has evolved from prior work. The second section focuses on disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, their diversities, areas of synergy, and parallel concerns. The following sections examine consulting as a knowledge business, consultants and management fashion, and the relationship between management consultants and their clients. The Handbook concludes with an assessment of areas of future research and debate. By bringing together a wide range of research and thinking on management consulting across different disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual approaches, the Handbook provides a comprehensive understanding of both current thinking and future directions for research.

The Globalization of Advertising draws upon previously unpublished research to unpack the contemporary structure, spatial organization and city geographies of global advertising agencies. The book demonstrates how teamwork in contemporary advertising agencies, intra-organizational power relations and the distribution of organizational capabilities all define how global agencies operate as transnationally integrated organizations. This in turn allows understanding to be developed of the role of the offices of global agencies located in the three case study cities, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York. The role of these three cities as preeminent markets for advertising in the USA is shown to have changed radically over recent years, experiencing both growth and decline in employment as a result of their position in global networks of advertising work; networks that operate in the context of a changing US economy and the rise of new and emerging centres of advertising in Asia and South America.

The field of management consultancy research has grown rapidly in recent years. Fuelled by the drivers of complexity and uncertainty, a growing number of organizations – both profit and third sector alike – are looking at management consultancy to assist in their aims for development and change. Consultants have become a common feature in organizational change initiatives, involved in both providing advice and in implementing ideas and solutions. However, despite this growing recognition and influence, management consultancy is still often misunderstood or criticized for its lack of theoretical underpinning. The book seeks to address these issues by offering applied theoretical insights from academics that both teach and practice management consultancy. Written by recognized experts in their field, the contributors combine original insights with authoritative analysis. Uniquely, this book identifies emerging themes with critical discourse and provides rich empirical case study evidence to show the reader how management consultancy projects are implemented. Real-world international consultancy projects are featured as written up cases featuring organizations from multi-national corporations to the public sector. Written for graduate level managers or those who have practical leadership experience, this book will enable readers to apply management consultancy models beyond a classroom context

A structural overview of the new field of management geography including globalization, embeddedness of MNEs, networking, hybridization, regional economies, technology, acculturation, internationalization, IHRM and implications for management and government.

The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business draws together a wide array of state-of-the-art research on multinational enterprises. The volume aims to deepen our historical understanding of how firms and entrepreneurs contributed to transformative processes of globalization. This book explores how global business facilitated the mechanisms of cross-border interactions that affected individuals, organizations, industries, national economies and international relations. The 37 chapters span the Middle Ages to the present day, analyzing the emergence of institutions and actors alongside key contextual factors for global business development. Contributors examine business as a central actor in globalization, covering myriad entrepreneurs, organizational forms and key industrial sectors. Taking a historical view, the chapters highlight the intertwined and evolving nature of economic, political, social, technological and environmental patterns and relationships. They explore dynamic change as well as lasting continuities, both of which often only become visible – and can only be fully understood – when analyzed in the long run. With dedicated chapters on challenges such as political risk, sustainability and economic growth, this prestigious collection provides a one-stop shop for a key business discipline. Chapter 31 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Management geography explores the spatial characteristics of management-related issues, especially of firms. This book discusses management geography in Japan and other Asian countries from Asian perspectives. The field has made significant contributions to the global economy but has not been deeply investigated in English-language geographical literature to date. The book addresses the following critical questions: What kinds of challenges do multinational corporations in Japan and other Asian countries face? How are managerial actors in multinational enterprises (MNEs) embracing boundary-spanning activities in a global context? How do firms and related entities cultivate business pipelines and ‘buzz’ within and beyond local regions? How do actors in Japanese MNEs, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and related institutions embed various managerial processes at overseas locations? This book consists of two parts: Part I discusses the application and roles of Japanese and international managerial practices in the globalizing world. Part II examines changing business communities in the industrial and rural spaces of East Asia, focusing primarily on Japan and China. This work will interest readers in a wide range of fields, including geography, management studies, economics, urban planning and sociology. The book is also suitable for upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students in geography, management studies and related fields.