ABSTRACT
Executive search has changed markedly from its emergence out of management consultancy in the USA in the 1930s and 1940s. Its globalization trajectory began from these roots and was led by the ‘Big Four’ US firms—Heidrick & Struggles, Spencer Stuart, Russell Reynolds and Korn Ferry—firms that continue to play a leading role in the continued global growth and legitimisation of executive search today. However, as the analysis in this book has shown, the story of the globalization of executive search is far more complicated and nuanced than a straightforward rolling out of American executive search practices and firms. For example, as the profession expanded in Europe from the 1950s onwards, these leading US-owned firms were joined by indigenous European counterparts such as Egon Zehnder, which was founded in Zurich in 1964. At this stage, both European and US-founded firms worked together, often being led and/or drawing on the working practices of key agents within the new profession, to translate the established nature of executive search in the US into forms of work that were both legitimate and normalised in the European context. Our analysis of this process highlights how a central component of the globalization of executive search at this time was that the then-emerging profession did not simply respond to market demand for executive search in Europe. Rather, its expansion was built around institutional work aimed at stimulating this demand through tactics designed to ensure potential clients recognise and value the services of an executive search firm.
