Alison Dean

Can Ideas be Capital? Factors of Production in the Postindustrial Economy: A Review and Critique

Economic and social relations are undergoing radical change, expressed in such concepts as “knowledge economy,” “weightless economy,” “postindustrial society,” and “information society.” The literature suggests the arrival of a distinct new factor of production—intellectual capital—replacing or perhaps supplementing land, labor, and capital. We give a historically informed theoretical exposition of capital as the durable result of past production processes, transforming future production while not being transformed itself and associated with a particular economic actor. We then construct a taxonomy of the possible characteristics and location of intellectual capital in postindustrial production.

The globalization of law firms: managerial issues

Purpose – To identify and discuss the changes arising within very large law firms from the pressure to provide global services and the issues for firms in implementing cross‐border integration.Design/methodology/approach – The research is qualitative, case‐based and exploratory, using a piloted topic guide. The study is of very large UK “City” law firms (i.e. those operating in over 20 countries) using in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with: managing partners, senior partners, partners and associates at “City” law firms, clients, US lawyers in London and non‐legal professionals. Data are triangulated with information from trade press, trade associations and firm reports.Findings – Identification of managerial issues of global integration common to law firms interviewed. These include: a shift to a “managed” firm and decline in professional autonomy; post‐acquisition integration and merger process issues; operationalization of global practices (such as common technology platforms, common systems practice...

The Rise of Super-Elite Law Firms: Towards Global Strategies

This paper reviews the pressures towards globalisation reshaping the corporate law sector. It uses Yips [Yip, G.S. (1996). Total global strategy (2nd ed.). Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] framework of global industry drivers. The dominant view has been that the globalisation potential of the legal industry is low since there are few global legal products and many regulatory differences between markets. However, within the corporate law sector, strong regulatory differences between countries are outweighed by the combined impact of market, competitive and cost drivers. Evidence from this research shows that the balance of industry drivers is towards there being benefits to the pursuit of global strategies within this sector. In practice, a small number of very large corporate law firms are implementing global strategies in pursuit of specific sources of future competitive advantage. Thus a small ‘super-elite’ of globalising firms is emerging.

Design As Knowledge Integration Capability

The design literature offers two design process models as alternatives for acquiring and using knowledge in design. The best established is the rational problem solving model which calls for technical recommendations. The reflective practitioner model is appropriate to softer, controversial issues that call for ideological prescriptions. We view these models as complementary, not alternative, strategies which can assist in understanding knowledge integration in the design process. This paper offers a more holistic perspective upon design than that commonly found in the Design Studies literature. Our conceptualisation of design as knowledge integration capability suggests that effective design decision making integrates knowledge contributions and reconciles disparate values to a common purpose. The quality of design decision making increasingly depends on the effective integration of knowledge from a range of sources. This is especially true in the knowledge intensive sectors which we have studied. We offer illustrations from biotechnology and note that technical knowledge inputs can not alone ensure a successful outcome. This has implications for the management and practice of design in multidisciplinary project teams.

Cross-border Management Issues in International Law Firms

This chapter focuses on the organizational changes arising from the creation of large cross-border legal service organizations and alliance networks. We address the management issues faced by legal professional service firms (PSFs) in responding to the demands placed upon their existing organizational structures and processes by the most recent phase in their international expansion. This phase of their growth has been intended to implement global strategies and to create global organization structures. In particular, our findings relate to the larger law firms for whom the requirement to build integrated global networks is a competitive and client expectation. To put the issue of firm size into perspective, the largest UK law firm at which we conducted interviews operated in 24 countries, had over 350 partners (of whom nearly 50 per cent were located outside the UK) and had fee income in excess of £450 million; a smaller firm studied still operated in 15 countries, had almost 3000 professional staff and over 300 partners, with fee income in excess of £280 million.