ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a precis of the emergence, development and function of executive search as both a knowledge-intensive professional service and an elite labour market intermediary. It describes the historical development of executive search, from its management consulting genesis in the USA in the 1940s and 1950s through its proliferation and indigenous growth in Europe from the late 1950s. The chapter explains the intermediary function of executive search in the labour market, focusing on its third-party agent, brokerage role between clients and candidates. An important point of this section is to unravel the mystique of the search process, which elucidates the professionalism and professionalisation of executive search. The chapter describes the arguments concerning the self-proclaimed professionalism and professionalisation of executive search and considers what defines search firms as knowledge-intensive professional services. In most jurisdictions, an absence of official government statistics on executive search to assist with an informative empirical analysis.
