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Research on international professional service firms (PSFs) has grown in recent years, reflecting the increasing relevance of these firms in the global economy. However, to date, no attempt has been made to systematically examine and integrate this literature. This study reviews the body of knowledge on the international management of PSFs and proposes a future research agenda that aims to strengthen the research on international PSFs, by applying the conceptual lens of PSF characteristics.

A systematic review of 108 empirical articles on the management of international PSFs was carried out.

The authors analyse where, how and what research was carried out on the international management of PSFs, and find that currently the field offers few opportunities to integrate findings or explain differences across different types of international PSFs. In recommendations for future research, the authors show how the lens of PSF characteristics can help overcome these issues and unveil promising avenues for future research that will lead to a more fine-grained theorising and understanding of the international management of PSFs.

The study provides a comprehensive state of the art of research on the international management of PSFs and a future research agenda, which builds on PSF characteristics to explore and better understand the heterogeneity of international PSFs, in order to develop more robust explanations of their behaviour and open new research avenues.

This paper aims to improve the permeability and antifouling of polysulfone (PSF) ultrafiltration membranes, the PSF matrix was modified by incorporating sulfonated polysulfone (SPSF).

Systematic investigations were conducted on the synergistic effects of a pore-forming agent, coagulation bath temperature and SPSF doping in the casting solution on blended ultrafiltration membranes. The chemical composition of the membranes was analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The morphology and surface roughness of the membranes were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The hydrophilicity of the membrane surface was analyzed using a contact angle meter. The permeability and antifouling properties of the blended membranes were also investigated through filtration experiments.

The results indicated that the blended ultrafiltration membranes demonstrated an optimal overall performance when PVP-K30 content was 5.0 Wt.%, coagulation bath temperature was 30°C and SPSF content was 2.4 Wt.%. In comparison to a pure PSF ultrafiltration membrane, there was a significant increase in pure water flux (390.7 L·m⁻²·h⁻¹) by 2.2 times, while bovine serum albumin retention slightly decreased to 93.8%. In addition, the flux recovery rate improved by 2.1 times (71.4%) compared to that of the original PSF ultrafiltration membrane.

The method provided a simple and practical solution for improving the antifouling and permeability of PSF ultrafiltration membranes.

SPSF was anticipated to serve as an excellent modification additive for the preparation of ultrafiltration membranes with superior properties.

This paper aims to identify what international management challenges professional service firms (PSFs) face and why they face them.

This study carries a focussed thematic literature review of 102 empirical articles. This paper uses content analysis to extract and aggregate challenges identified by researchers in their fieldwork and then analysed this data using qualitative and quantitative methods.

This study identifies 10 international management challenges that PSFs face and a number of causes for these challenges. The analysis also suggests that the distinctive characteristics of PSFs generate some of the international management challenges for PSFs.

This study helps PSF managers understand the international management challenges they may face depending on the specifics of their company, thus helping them better prepare their internationalisation.

This study contributes to providing a greater understanding of what is holding PSFs back in their internationalisation and why. It demonstrates that distinctive characteristics of PSFs may predict the challenges that PSFs will face, thus paving the way for further research on international management in PSFs and for the development of the diagnostic tool for practitioners that could help them to identify which challenges they should prepare for most.

This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of relationship marketing in professional services firms (PSF). The process of dialogical interaction with clients is central to relationship marketing. However, client dialogue may fall dormant if not properly cultivated by employees of the PSF, that is, by professionals. This inductive study aims to investigate how professionals sustain a fruitful client dialogue by proactively introducing additional client problems to the dialogue.

Extensive field research with a “Big Four” accounting firm and 11 client companies inductively generates a framework to describe how professionals engage in proactive diagnosis of client problems to introduce these problems to the client dialogue. The framework is grounded in 49 focused interviews with professionals and client managers, as well as supplementary interviews, observations, and firm documents.

The suggested framework consists of the components of proactive diagnosis (information‐seeking and influence strategies), a trade‐off that professionals must make among these components, several enablers of and constraints on proactive diagnosis, and key client concerns that professionals must address to introduce additional client problems.

Despite the importance of client dialogue for relationship marketing, recommendations about how professionals can sustain client dialogue over time remain limited. This study describes proactive diagnosis as one potential approach. It contributes to literature on relationship marketing in PSFs by showing how proactive diagnosis helps professionals overcome the problem of dormancy in client dialogue, complements personal selling, and extends the role of diagnosis beyond paid client assignments into the pre‐selling phase.

The purpose of this paper is to show why developing an enabling performance measurement system (PMS) can be useful to small professional service firms (PSFs) and how small PSFs can develop such an enabling PMS.

The authors used a process‐consultation type of action research design; they developed an enabling PMS in close cooperation with the employees of a small PSF. The effects of this intervention were assessed by means of document analysis, participant observation, and individual/group interviews.

The enabling PMS development process helped the firm deal with three challenges common to small PSFs: it increased employees’ understanding about how to apply the firm's strategy; it led to greater knowledge exchange among employees; and it enabled them to create new knowledge.

The research results suggest the type of intervention used for developing an enabling PMS – that has already been shown to be effective in large firms – may also be useful for small PSFs. Similarities and differences with the intervention in large firms are discussed.

Small PSFs may benefit from the approach described herein: to develop a PMS in a participatory manner. It is especially useful if interested in better alignment of operations with strategy and/or to better explicate tacit and create new firm‐relevant knowledge.

This is the first paper about developing an enabling PMS in a small PSF.

A recent managerial trend is the move towards total quality management (TQM) in all economic sectors: manufacturing, service, public and now the professional services. Successful implementation of TQM requires that staff in adopting organizations change how they work and, in particular, how they relate to customers and co‐workers. However, professionals have several characteristics that make them difficult to manage. Examines some potential difficulties in the TQM approach as it applies to professional service firms, describes some successes and discusses some implementation issues.

By drawing on a detailed case study of the work of tax consultants, the purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of the role of ambiguity in professional work, and its relationship to the division of labour in professional service firms (PSFs).

The paper is based on a three-year, longitudinal interpretive case study comprising 42 interviews, supplemented by observations and document data.

The research determines that processes of “obfuscation” and “privatisation” separate client work from case work. This maintains a division of labour between junior and senior professionals, which in turn facilitates financial leverage. The findings indicate that a more nuanced view on the role and origins of ambiguity is needed; particularly the role ambiguity plays in the division of labour. While inherent in professional work, ambiguity is also an effect of the way work processes are organised in order to obtain leverage.

The research is based on a case study. Therefore, the paper explores its topic in empirical detail, but at the same time calls for exploring the topic in different contexts. The paper encourages further research on the role ambiguity plays being constituted by structural arrangements, and on the way the core of professionalism is inverted by the division of labour. The paper highlights the value of detailed empirical approaches for understanding professional work.

The paper draws attention to the way ambiguity becomes a part in sustaining a division of labour among professional workers, and to the importance of this in maintaining financial leverage as well as in creating a precarious work situation for junior professionals.

The paper raises concerns about the way professional work is legitimated in society as opposed to how it is constructed in PSFs.

The paper challenges prevalent notions of professional work as ambiguous, offering instead a way of engaging with professional work processes in detail, theoretically and methodologically. Traditional assumptions about the division of labour and the “core” of professional work are problematized, and traditional assumptions about ambiguity as a cause of specific structural arrangements are questioned.

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.

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.

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 practices, common human resources management practices and cross‐border intra‐firm working relationships) to achieve consistency throughout the integrated firm.

Data set is derived from UK firms only and dependent on respondent views. Findings indicate that law firms have become less distinctive and more like other service businesses.

The paper identifies the processes by which consistent cross‐border service to the client may be achieved within globally integrated firms.

Law is an under‐researched industry. This research adds to knowledge of the legal services industry; explores globalization in a professional service firm context; extends the global strategy literature into the services domain. This is also one of the few papers on law firms based on primary data.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of digitalization on the key characteristics of professional service firms (PSFs) that are part of the service sector and inherently oriented with intense knowledge, capital and professionalized workforces.xD; xA.

This study adopted a qualitative, exploratory and inductive research methodology based on in-depth interviews with 49 entrepreneurs/professionals of PSFs focusing on the role of digitalization including capital intensity, knowledge intensity and professionalized workforce.

The result reflected that digitalization facilitates at lower levels of knowledge intensity, whereas it increases the capital intensity for most of the firms and decreases the professionalization of the workforce among PSFs.

The study provides empirical validations where digitalization has changed the distinctive characteristics of PSFs, which promotes new practices, allows for variation and transforms their competitive contexts. In light of these findings, the authors illuminated the application of digitalization on the Indian law firms, retail, education, healthcare and manufacturing industry.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for evaluating the hygrothermal performance of framed wall assemblies based on design limits. This methodology allows designers to evaluate wall assemblies based on their absolute performance rather than relative performance which is typically done for most hygrothermal analysis.

The approach in developing this methodology was to evaluate wall assemblies against three typical design loads (e.g. air leakage, construction moisture, rain penetration) and determine limits in minimum insulation ratio, maximum indoor humidity and maximum rain penetration rates. This analysis was performed at both the field area of the wall and at framing junctions such as window sills.

The findings in this paper shows example design limits for various wall assemblies in heating-dominated climates in North America. Design limits for wall assemblies with moisture membranes of different vapour permeance are provided for both the field area of the wall and at window sills. Discussions about the importance of 2D hygrothermal simulation and performance of vapour permeable sub-sill membranes are also provided.

This framework of hygrothermal analysis will enable designers to make better decisions when designing framed wall assemblies suitable to the local climate and interior specifications for their projects. It will also enable the development of a design tool that will allow designers to visually see the implications of certain design decisions and filter out designs that do not meet their design conditions.