Competence Regimes in Professional Service Firm Internationalization and Professional Careers

Abstract

Professional service firms (PSFs) are dependent on the competence of their employees to develop and retain new business. We investigate how PSFs utilize professional competence for strategic goals such as business internationalization and simultaneously facilitate professionals’ career mobility. We examine over a 5-year period the careers of 29 lawyers working in a large corporate law firm and identify four different competence regimes: technicians, project managers, competitive analysts, and global strategists. We argue that these competence regimes enable PSFs to pursue organizational business strategies while advancing or constraining or even undermining professional employees’ career goals and aspirations. Specifically, we show how the four competence regimes facilitate the PSF’s strategy to internationalize its business and support high performing employees’ social mobility goals to develop their professional competence and advance their career. We then give suggestions for future research studies on competence regimes in professional organizations.

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