The Best of Two Worlds - Understanding how global professional service firms balance global integration and local responsiveness

Sammanfattning: In the wake of the knowledge economy, professional service firms (PSFs) have arisen and capitalized on knowledge, offering advanced expertise to their clients. With time, they have expanded across borders and several global PSFs are now among the world's largest companies. This journey has significantly impacted their organizational structures and management processes and given rise to tensions stemming from pressures of being both globally integrated and locally responsive. Specifically, PSFs are on one hand expected by clients to be uniform across borders, while on the other hand, they are expected to provide advanced expertise relevant and customized to specific, local markets. To date, little attention has been turned to the internationalization and internal organizational arrangement of PSFs, wherefore this thesis aims to establish a greater understanding of how global PSFs balance integration and responsiveness in practice. A qualitative study was carried out in the Swedish subsidiaries of three global insurance intermediary firms. The findings show that the global headquarters to varying extents attempt to achieve global integration through (1) firm-wide policies, (2) standardization of processes and systems, (3) knowledge sharing, and (4) standardization of services. Meanwhile, local responsiveness was found to be achieved through (1) adaptation to local context, (2) professional autonomy, and (3) customization of services. Overall, the findings indicated that it is indeed challenging for the firms to successfully be both integrated and responsive at the same time.