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Institutional Legacies and Firm Dynamics: The Growth and Internationalization of UK and German Law Firms

Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK

Sigrid Quack

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Germany

This article addresses the question of how economic actors (re)shape their organizational and institutional contexts as their activities internationalize. By focusing on law firms, we choose a professional activity that has been regarded as highly determined by the national distinctiveness of professional and legal systems and would lead us to expect strong institutional legacies on firm dynamics. The comparative study of the growth and internationalization of corporate law firms in the UK and Germany presented in this article, however, refutes this view. The results reveal that in both settings ‘institutional pockets’ of corporate lawyers existed whose entrepreneurial orientations and international reach were much stronger than among other subgroups of the profession. From the 1970s onwards, these lawyers and law firms engaged in redefining their organizational and institutional contexts with the aim of positioning themselves in ways that would allow them to seize upon the emerging international markets for legal services. They did so in different ways and at different times in each country. We conclude that internationalization of UK and German law firms bears traces of institutional legacies as well as signs of path-modification, and that international markets for legal services may be more differentiated and less dominated by Anglo-Saxon law firms and conceptions of law than has been so far recognized.

Key Words: national business systems • multinational firms • professional service firms • legal systems • institutional change

Organization Studies, Vol. 26, No. 12, 1765-1785 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0170840605059156


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