Leading professional service firms : power, politics, and prima donnas

This book analyses the complex power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of leadership in professional organizations, such as accounting, law, and consulting firms, investment banks, hospitals, and universities. It is based on scholarly research into many of the world’s leading professional organizations across a range of sectors, including interviews with over 500 senior professionals in sixteen countries. Drawing on the latest academic theory to analyse exactly how professionals in organizations come together to create ‘leadership’, it provides new insights into how leaders lead when there is no traditional hierarchy to support them, their own authority is contingent, and they must constantly renegotiate relationships with relatively autonomous professional peers. It explores how leaders persuade highly intelligent, educated, and opinionated professionals to work together; how change happens within professional organizations; and why leaders so often fail. Part I introduces the concept of plural leadership, analysing how leaders establish and maintain their positions within leadership constellations, and the implications for governance in the context of collective or distributed leadership. Part II examines the complex, challenging relationships between professionals as they seek to influence their organizations, including the phenomena of leadership dyads, insecure overachievers, social control, and the rise of the management professional. Part III examines the shifts in the locus of power as professional organizations grow, adapt, and react to external stimuli such as mergers and acquisitions and economic crises. The conclusion identifies the paradoxes inherent in professional organizations and examines the role of leaders in attempting to reconcile them. "Professional organizations - such as accounting and consulting firms, law firms, and investment banks - are fundamental to the functioning of the global economy. Yet many of the most powerful are notoriously private. This book uncovers the complex, messy, and surprisingly emotional challenges of leading professional organizations - revealing the realities that lies beneath the 'professional' surface which these organizations present to the outside world. Individual professionals - highly educated, highly intelligent, and highly opinionated - are generally reluctant to see themselves as followers and may be equally reluctant to put themselves forward as leaders. They value their autonomy and confer authority on their leaders on a highly contingent basis. How does a professional come to be seen as a leader within a professional organization? How do leaders maintain their position once they have reached the top of their organization? How do they navigate the complex power relationships among their professional colleagues and actually get things done? Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas analyses the complex power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of leadership in professional organizations. It is based on Laura Empson's scholarly research into the world's leading professional organizations across a range of sectors, including interviews with over 500 senior professionals in 16 countries. It draws on the latest organizational and leadership theory to analyse in detail exactly how professionals come together to create 'leadership'. It identifies how change happens within professional organizations and explains why their leaders so often fail."-- Publisher's website This book reveals the power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of professional organizations. Drawing on the latest academic theory, and based on interviews with over 500 senior professionals, it analyses how professionals come together to create 'leadership'. It explains how change happens and why leaders so often fail