Managing the Professional Service Firm

David H. Maister

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Management and Organizational Practices Leadership and Management in Organizations Human Resource and Talent Management

Abstract

At last here is a comprehensive text on managerial problems of professional firms. Maister, whose international consulting practice has gained him reputation among his peers as the guru's guru, brings together for first time his most brilliant and penetrating work on virtually management issue facing professional firms today. Professional firms, he shows, are different from other business enterprises in two ways. First, they are in business of providing highly customized services, and hence cannot apply many of management principles developed for mass production industrial world. Second, professional services are highly personalized and involve skills of individuals. Firms must compete not only for clients, but also for talented professionals. Drawing on ten years' research amid consulting to these unique and creative institutions, Maister explores issues ranging from marketing and business development to multinational strategies, from human resource policies to profit improvement strategies, from strategic planning to effective behavior of practice leaders. His concepts and practical advice have already become gospel to accountants, consultants, lawyers, public relations agencies, executive search, and many other professions. Maister simplifies management issues by observing that every professional service firm in world, regardless of size, specific profession, or country of operation, has same mission statement: outstanding service to clients, satisfying careers for its people, and financial success for its owners. Professional service firms, he shows, must practice balance sheet management by learning to develop their two key assets: client relationships and their stock of skill, talent, knowledge, and ability. David Maister's name is synonymous with latest thinking in professional service firm management. This book suggests why. --James L. Heskett, Professor, Harvard Business School Co-author of Service Breakthroughs

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2007Knowledge-Based Innovation: Emergence and Embedding of New Practice Areas in Management Consulting Firms 2006Organization and Inequality in a Knowledge Economy 2001Fear of Exploitation and Fear of Contamination: Impediments to Knowledge Transfer in Mergers between Professional Service Firms 2005Reputation, Diversification, and Organizational Explanations of Performance in Professional Service Firms 1998Organisation and expertise: An exploration of knowledge bases and the management of accounting and consulting firms 2005How do interdependencies among human‐capital deployment, development, and diversification strategies affect firms' financial performance?2009Hiring Stars and Their Colleagues: Exploration and Exploitation in Professional Service Firms 2001Colonizing Knowledge: Commodification as a Dynamic of Jurisdictional Expansion in Professional Service Firms

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