Reinserting the professional into the study of globalizing professional service firms: the case of law

Abstract In discussions of the globalization of professional service firms there is an increasing recognition that understanding the ‘social construction’ of organizational architectures is essential. In this article we argue, using the management of transnational law firms as an example, that to understand effectively these social constructions we must reincorporate an understanding of the principles of professionalism into discussions. We highlight the importance of occupational autonomy to professionals and how this is likely to influence the strategies that global professional service firms use. We also point to what we term the ‘varieties of professionalism’ and the spatially variable professional projects that underlie the values and identities of lawyers. This reveals the way rational and efficient forms of organizing have to be adapted as a result of professional values and the diverse ideals and beliefs of lawyers in different international jurisdictions.     

Global cities in Global Commodity Chains: exploring the role of Mexico City in the geography of global economic governance

In this article I assert that global cities are critical nodes in Global Commodity Chains because it is from them that producer services are provided. I explore forward linkages of producer service firms in Mexico City, showing that there are important service flows to companies responsible for the globalization of the 'Mexican' economy. Based on this finding I also indicate reasons why Mexico City is 'on the map' of global cities and of Global Commodity Chains. I argue that both access to local knowledge and close contact to clients are key factors. A third issue dealt with is the position of Mexico City in the geography of governance of commodity chains. The analysis suggests that it is useful to break up global city functions into the management of the world economy and into its command and control, because Mexico City is certainly a place for the former, while the scope of influence exercised from the city is rather limited.     

The uses and abuses of time: globalization and time arbitrage in India's outsourcing industries

Globalization has undoubtedly altered our conceptions and experience of time. It has sped up the pace of life and some scholars even suggest that a new temporal order is supplanting ‘natural’ and pre‐existing cycles and rhythms. Yet time is not dissolved in the global circuits of capital. Rather, globalization has brought about a complex mixture of temporal orientations; the workplaces of ‘new economy’, for example, are traversed by novel and retrograde modes of work pace, rhythm and time‐discipline. In this article, I explore the temporal implications of the outsourcing of information technology‐based service work to India. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers, managers and executives in the Indian IT and Business Processing Outsourcing industries, I address the following questions: (1) How are corporations using time arbitrage to reap the full benefits of a globally dispersed labour pool? (2) What impacts are these temporal changes having on the health and social lives of Indian workers? For corporations, time arbitrage means increased efficiency and cost‐savings. But for workers, it results in long hours, an intense work pace, and temporal displacement. Night‐shift employees, such as call centre workers, are particularly vulnerable to such displacement, as manifested in health and safety problems and social alienation. Globalization therefore does not entail the loosening of temporal chains, but their reconfiguration: a combination both rigid and flexible that binds even as it liberates.     

A post‐socialist legacy in transnational families: Russian and Polish women in Finland

In this article, we bridge the analytical gap between transnational anthropology and the anthropology of post‐socialism to explore the transnational family lives of Russian and Polish women in Finland. We point to three interrelated aspects of the post‐socialist legacy – (1) an inclusive understanding and practice of family that involves the interactions of immediate and extended family configurations; (2) intergenerational solidarity among women; and (3) feminine subjectivity built on the socialist ideal of a working mother. Our ethnographies illustrate that Russian and Polish women maintain their transnational families through networks of transnationally dispersed extended families. In women's lives and selves, traditional gendered motherhood and the liberal idea of a working woman are combined and supported by women's intergenerational companionship across borders. Our case studies show that such concrete, informal relations of affection and care provide women with a sense of security and self‐worth amid transnational change.     

The duality of world cities and firms: comparing networks,hierarchies, and inequalities in the global economy

Much of the research on globalization conceives of the global economy as structured by networks among places, while separately organizational research has examined the role of networks among firms in structuring competition, collaboration, and cooperation. In both cases, position and centrality within the network confers certain advantages and disadvantages, the distribution of which defines a hierarchy. In this article, I explore the idea of dual networks of world cities and firms, then use Breiger's approach to define two such networks: one among 313 world cities, another among 100 advanced producer service firms. Comparison of the degree of inequality in the hierarchies implied by these networks suggest that world city hierarchies are steeper than firm hierarchies (that is there is greater inequality among cities). Thus, even under conditions of footloose global capitalism, place still matters: where a producer is located has more impact than who provides support services.     

Global value chains in international knowledge work: networks,stratifications and labour markets

In this article, I aim to cast light on the arguably indeterminate phenomenon of the global labour market (GLM) by placing the focus on an industry that has sometimes been perceived as epitomizing homogeneity and ‘world flatness’ in its deployment of geographically dispersed knowledge workers, that of international software development. Engaging in a sanguine analysis of this industry with reference to an empirical study of outsourcing to Ukraine it is revealed that labour markets servicing ICT (Information and communication technology) are subject to deep, if fluctuating, social stratifications. With reference to the notion of the global value chain (GVC), 1 1 ¹GVC analysis focuses on the governance patterns and relational dynamics between lead and supplier firms at the sectoral level. The GVC and its predecessor, the global commodity chain (GCC) focus on the inter‐firm linkages and especially power relations between different actors (Feuerstein 2013). The similar concept of global production network (GPN) concerns the broader set of relations of power, positionality and value capture between all relevant firm and extra firm actors within a network (Thompson 2013). For this study on sourcing in the global software industry, the term GVC will be utilized throughout.
the significance of factors such as knowledge, language, citizenship and age as labour market differentiators for knowledge work is brought to the fore.     

Networks of capital,networks for migration: political–economic integration and the changing geography of Mexico–US migration

While economic globalization has altered the geography of international migration and introduced an array of new sources and destinations, our understanding of the specific mechanisms that link economic globalization to migration remains limited. In this article, I attempt to extend previous research by undertaking an empirical case study of Mexican migration to the USA. Using a unique dataset, I construct multivariate models to test whether, in the context of economic integration, occupations channel migration between similar sectors of the Mexican and US economies. I focus on the food‐processing sector because of its role in the geographic dispersal of Mexican immigration. The results show a strong channelling of Mexican immigration along an occupational line linking the Mexican and US food‐processing sectors. The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ushered in a period of intensive political and economic integration, strengthened this occupational channel. By seeing the changing geography of Mexico–US migration in the context of economic globalization, this study casts light on the micro‐level foundations of the globalization–migration nexus.     

The Not-So-Flat World: Exploring the Meaning of Buying at the Intersection of the Global and the Local at a Starbucks in Singapore

Abstract

This essay pulls together two threads of literature on globalization and buying to explore how consumers constantly re-signify the global and national origins of products and deploy these global products to create local, even family and dinner table conversations about identity and self. Based on interviews, surveys, and ethnographic research, I look at the drinking of Starbucks coffee in Singapore by ex-pats and middle-class citizens, but especially by young Malays. What does it mean for these teens from the most economically and socially marginal community in this multicultural country to publicly consume oversized American products? What are they saying about themselves and their relationship to their tradition-bound community? What can we learn about globalization and how it works and how it is represented on the ground in local conversations by charting the consumption of this American product by a somewhat outsider community in this transnational place? I focus on this group of buyers, again, to explore in detail the very localized meanings of this very resonant and globalized product.     

Striking Differences: Hunger Strikes in Israel and the USA

Despite longstanding traditions of tolerance, inclusion, and democracy in the USA, dissident citizens and social movements have experienced significant and sustained – although often subtle and difficult-to-observe – repression. Using mechanism-based social movement theory, I explore a range of twentieth-century episodes of contention, involving such groups as mid-century communists, the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the modern-day Global Justice Movement. Cracking open the black box of state repression, I demonstrate how four interactive social mechanisms – Resource Depletion, Stigmatization, Divisive Disruption, and Intimidation – animate state repression. A fifth mechanism – Emulation – diffuses the effects of these four Mechanisms of Repression. First I delineate a typology of state actions that suppress dissent. Then I shift analytically from these ten actions to the Mechanisms of Repression, explaining how these mechanisms work. Drawing on scholarship from an array of fields, and pulling data from a variety of sources, I explain how the state has engaged in activity that – operating through social mechanisms – inhibits collective action, either through raising the costs or minimizing the benefits of mobilization.     

Sending Granny to Chiang Mai: debating global outsourcing of care for the elderly

This article ties in with existing discussions on global care chains, family separation and the devaluation of social‐reproductive work. We explore the new trend of outsourcing care for the elderly to countries with lower wages. We base our analysis on the debate in the German press and supplement it with insights from ethnographic field observations in two care homes in Thailand. We identify a discourse of abandonment, which shows how outsourcing the care of the elderly unsettles the privilege of sedentarism that is often taken for granted in the Global North. Furthermore, the newspaper articles tend to villainize people who seek care for their loved ones abroad. We argue that both discourses foster a neoliberal rationale of individualized responsibility and obfuscate the deep systemic roots of the care crisis in the Global North. However, by extending the discussion on outsourcing care for the elderly beyond the dominant media discourses, we envisage a rich potential for provoking political debate on the revaluation of care.     

The pivotal role of news agencies in the context of globalization: a historical approach

The global media play a fundamental role in contemporary globalization, making possible instant communication and promoting an experience of global connectedness. The globalization of media communications has deeply shaped the modern journalistic field in the last 150 years and, at the same time, global news organizations have been instrumental in creating the very conditions that have made globalization possible. In this article I explore the relationship between globalization and the media and trace the historical development of the field of global news, examining in detail the role and trajectories of its most important players, the global news agencies, and highlighting significant parallels between nineteenth‐century globalization and the processes that have led to increased global connectedness in the past decades. I also devote some attention to the more recent developments in the field of global news and the appearance of new types of media organizations.     

Imagined communities in the global game: soccer and the development of Dutch national identity

Abstract Using the recent history of Dutch soccer as an illustrative case, this article supports a line of argument in globalization studies that generally focuses on the variable reverberations of globalization and more specifically suggests that globalization entails the embattled redefinition of national identities. I show how the involvement of the Dutch national team in global competition aided the construction of a myth of national football distinction and how media coverage and discourse turned this myth into a key element of a re imagined national community. The Dutch view of themselves as a unique soccer nation fits familiar global patterns, and a sociologically informed critique of their romantic soccer self‐image displays the myth as myth. At the same time, however, the critique is part of the discourse, which involves more than an a historical expressive myth erected as a defence against globalization. I argue that it is more complex, more reflexive and more fluid than some accounts of soccer nationalism would lead us to expect or than nostalgic neopatriots might prefer. The article thus also offers a critique of a standard critique of national sports image‐making, which fits with a promising thrust in soccer and globalization scholarship.     

The transnational effect of multicultural policies on migrants' identification: the case of the Israeli diaspora in the USA

While it is difficult to gauge the effect of multicultural policies within countries, it is even more difficult to measure them across countries. In this article, I use fundamental multicultural changes that have occurred in Israeli society in recent decades as a case study, and track their effect on how Israelis who reside in the USA identify with Israel. Analysing the US census and the American Community Survey, I have focused my research on three groups of Israeli‐born migrants in the USA – Israeli Arabs, ultra‐Orthodox Jews and the Jewish majority. Findings indicate that originating from a minority community in the homeland predicts not only a different rate, but also different longitudinal trends of Israeli identification. I offer several possible explanations for these variations, but an in‐depth analysis of the Israeli case indicates that the transnational effect of the changing multicultural agenda in Israel is the leading mechanism at play.     

Positivism in sociological research: USA and UK (1966-1990)

Positivism has been declared dead in sociological theory circles, yet questions remain as to its viability among researchers. The authors present diagnostic evidence about positivism in sociological practice through a content analysis of journal articles published in the late 1960s and the late 1980s in the sociological journals of the USA and Britain. Using an index based on seven elements of positivism that were characteristic of the 'theory construction' movement of the late 1960s, the authors find evidence of the effects of time and nation on the use of positivism. Disaggregation of the index reveals that most of the observed change is associated with the elements of 'instrumental' positivism, particularly statistics. The results raise questions about the relationship between theory and research and about sociologists' philosophies of science.     

Naming the Beast: Defining and Classifying Service Innovations in Social Policy

Over the last decade, the search for innovationhas become a core component of much social policyformulation and implementation. This search, however,has often been undertaken with little attempt to define the actual nature of innovation or to classifyits different modes. This paper reports recent researchwhich has developed a typologyof organizational changewithin which to situate and analyze innovation in social policy. It argues that thistypologyis an essential tool both for socialpolicymakers and for those concerned with itsanalysis.     

Transnational political action and ‘global civil society’ in practice: the case of Oxfam

The term ‘global civil society’ has taken on increasing significance within scholarly debate over the past decade. In this article we seek to understand transnational political agency via the study of a particular transnational actor, Oxfam. We argue that various schools of thought surrounding the global civil society concept, in particular the prevailing liberal‐cosmopolitan approach, are unable to conceptualize transnational political action in practice – due largely, in the case of liberal‐cosmopolitanism, to a shared normative agenda. We also assess what contribution literature on development and civil society has made to the analysis of groups such as Oxfam. In investigating Oxfam's own perceptions of its context and the meanings of its agency, we discover an anti‐political perspective derived from an encounter between Oxfam's longstanding commitment to liberal internationalism and globalization discourse. Existing scholarship has insufficiently identified the local or parochial nature of the identities of global civil society actors.     

Social work education in Australia and the USA: comparative perspectives and contemporary issues

The article discusses similarities and differences in social work education and profession in Australia and the USA, reflects on contemporary issues and challenges that affect social work education and practice in both countries, and identifies mutual areas of learning and exchange. Drawing on secondary data, it comparatively analyses important variables such as the growth of social work education, curricula and curricular models, accreditation standards, code of ethics and professional licensure. The analysis shows significant similarities and differences in these variables, and brings out unaddressed issues and challenges. It argues that the profession in general has not adequately been successful in translating its value-based ideals into social work education and practice in both countries, particularly in the context of the free market economies. Experiences of both countries provide scope for mutual sharing and learning.     

Intra-firm and extra-firm linkages in the knowledge economy: the case of the emerging mega-city region of Munich

With the aim of identifying emerging patterns of spatial development and the driving forces behind the associated process, in this article we draw together two threads of interlinked phenomena. First, we look at how multi-location firms from the knowledge economy develop their intra-firm networks internationally. Second, we establish the partners with which these firms have working relationships along individual chains of value, and in which these extra-firm linkages are located. We start from a conceptual background that combines the location behaviour of firms with a value chain approach. We analyse the two main pillars of the knowledge economy – advanced producer services (APS) and high-tech firms. A case study carried out in the greater Munich area provides the empirical basis and draws on quantitative and qualitative research methods. The results provide evidence that the greater Munich area can be regarded simultaneously as a hierarchically organized polycentric mega-city region and high-grade localized system of value chains.     

Improving quality of life in old age: the role of regular physical activity

Physical activity in old age has been shown to produce considerable physiological, psychological and social benefits. However, many older adults take very little exercise. Lack of facilities or meaningful role models together with social and cultural expectations concerning the appropriateness of physical activity for older adults have been cited as reasons for lack of involvement. The development of intergenerational programs is suggested as a potential means of increasing the proportion of older individuals who participate in regular physical exercise.