Going Global: The Transnational Diffusion of Professional Work

• In Event: 264 - Regular Session. Economic Globalization

Abstract

This study innovates by proposing that the bricolage carried out in some professional work is a central mechanism in the process of globalization. Previous research has implied this link (e.g., Hanlon 2004), but we lack models to explain how this occurs. Specifically, it is unclear how the kind of idiosyncratic local problem-solving that characterizes bricolage diffuses to the global level and becomes institutionalized. This 10-country interview study addresses the gap in knowledge by examining the financial and legal innovations created by wealth management professionals. Wealth managers are lawyers, bankers, accountants and others who specialize in helping their elite clientele protect assets from taxation and regulation. The findings indicate that relationality—both between professionals and clients, and between a profession and other fields of practice—is central to the transmission of local solutions to the global-institutional level. Based on inductive analysis of 49 interviews with wealth managers in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, the paper offers a new model of the emergence of global practices and norms, driven by professional bricolage.

Author

• Brooke Harrington, Copenhagen Business School