The Globalization of the Executive Search Industry ― Professional Services Strategy and Dynamics in the Contemporary World

The globalization of the executive search industry has been fuelled by two related trends. First, within knowledge based economies, both private and public enterprises have increased demand for highly-skilled, talented labor to fill vacancies within labor markets that are functioning increasingly at a global scale. Second, the pool of potential recruits has increased dramatically as a result of the ubiquity of higher education and growth in business and executive education. In response, executive search firms have developed a range of selection technologies that complement and increasingly replace firms’ internal Human Resource functions in order to select and recruit the next generation of transnational executives. Moreover, in the current economic crisis, the role of executive search has become even more influential in articulating executive, expert, and elite labor markets as firms engage in cut-throat competition to ‘win the war for talent’ and seek the highest value-added labor resources for their organizations. Meanwhile, highly skilled individuals in executive labor markets are increasingly using headhunting services as they seek to maintain their own employability and career progression following periods of redundancy and employment uncertainty.

As a result, a book-length analysis of contemporary trends relating to executive search, the ‘war for talent,’ and their globalization is timely. This book examines the key actors in the process of executive search globalization – leading global firms, the impacts of globalization on incumbent hotspots for search and selection, mature markets such as Europe and North America, and the emerging markets of India, China and eastern Europe. In particular, it offers an interpretation of the forces producing the contemporary organizational strategies and geographies of the global executive search industry. The authors explore the changes that have occurred in global search and selection in the recent past (last 10 years especially) and the trends associated with new and emerging markets for headhunting in Asia and beyond.

Jonathan Beaverstock is Professor of Geography at the University of Nottingham. He has a global reputation for investigating the globalization strategies of transnational professional service firms, including accounting, advertising, legal services and investment banking. All of his research has been situated in many of the major world cities – New York, London, Frankfurt, Sydney and Singapore - and has taken the form of interviews at C.E.O., President and Vice-President level, including headhunting executives in London, Singapore and Sydney. He has over 100 publications. His latest book is International Business Travel in the Global Economy (2010), edited with Ben Derudder, James Faulconbridge and Frank Witlox.

James Faulconbridge is a scholar with an emerging reputation for the study of professional service firms, their role in globalization and the emergence of a ‘global knowledge economy.’ His latest book is The Globalization of Advertising: Agencies, Cities and Spaces of Creativity (Routledge, 2011), with Jonathan Beaverstock and Peter Taylor.

Sarah Hall’s research examines the ways in which different types of knowledge shape contemporary socio-economic practices in the global economy. Her research uses interviews and participant observation to examine these processes through a sectoral focus on financial services. She has conducted research in the UK, US and Europe and most recently focused on the role of business schools and other forms of professional education in shaping financial services practice and elite labour markets more generally. Her research has been published in a number of leading international academic journals and supported by the ESRC, The Nuffield Foundation and The British Academy.