The Globalization of Executive Search: Professional Services Strategy and Dynamics in the Contemporary World

Executive search, headhunting, is now one of the archetypal new knowledge intensive professional services, as well as a labor market intermediary bound up with globalization. In this book, the authors examine the key actors in the process of executive search globalization – leading global firms – and offer an interpretation of the forces producing the contemporary organizational strategies of global executive search. The Globalization of Executive Search documents the forms of institutional work that have legitimated the role of executive in elite labor markets and created demand for the services of global firms; this exposes not only the changing geographies of executive search, but also how executive search has established itself as a new knowledge intensive professional service. The authors reveal how the globalization of executive search is exemplary of the processes by which a range of new knowledge intensive professional services have come to be globally recognized, approaching the heart of contemporary capitalism.

Jonathan V. Beaverstock is Professor of International Management at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. His research investigates the strategy of globalizing professional services firms, talent management and highly-skilled mobilities, and the competitiveness of financial centres. He publishes widely in business/management, economic geography, and migration and urban studies.

James R. Faulconbridge is Professor of Transnational at Lancaster University Management School, United Kingdom. His research focuses on knowledge, learning and innovation; globalization and professional services; and, corporate mobility. He has published in leading journals, including: Journal of Economic Geography; Organization Studies, and Work, Employment and Society.

Sarah J.E. Hall is Associate Professor and Reader of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Her research examines the circuits of knowledge, expertise and elites that shape the contemporary global service economy. Sarah has published widely in economic geography and sociology.