Works
- Is public ownership bad for professional service firms? Ad agency ownership, performance, and creativity, Academy of Management Journal 50(2), 429 to 445, 2007
- What is a professional service firm? Toward a theory and taxonomy of knowledge-intensive firms, Academy of Management Review 35(1), 155 to 174, 2010
- Does the emergence of publicly traded professional service firms undermine the theory of the professional partnership? A cross-industry historical analysis, Journal of Professions and Organization 1(2), 137 to 160, 2014
- 25 years since 'P2': taking stock and charting the future of professional firms, Journal of Professions and Organization 4(2), 91 to 111, 2017
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The theory of the professional service firm
Ideas
What makes a professional service firm. Knowledge intensity, low capital intensity, and a professionalized workforce define professional service firms and yield a taxonomy of four kinds of knowledge-intensive firm. Caveat: Conceptual; he warns against conflating professionalization with knowledge intensity.
Public ownership of professional firms. Professional norms, more than economic disadvantage, explain where public corporations are absent; where norms do not bind, they track the value of capital and firm size. Caveat: Historical patterns, not a causal test.