From professionals to entrepreneurs : HR practices as an enabler for fostering corporate entrepreneurship in professional service firms

Professional Service Firms (PSFs) such as accounting, consulting, law, engineering or advertising firms increasingly face changing attitudes and fluctuation among young high potentials that question traditional career and human resource (HR) concepts. In this context, it seems vital to foster a spirit of corporate entrepreneurship in PSFs to create an attractive environment that satisfies the autonomy-striving professionals. Our research is based on a multiple case study design that investigates how corporate entrepreneurship in the fields of elite accounting/consulting and law firms can be enabled by HR practices. Specifically, we analyse how contemporary PSFs manage to identify, select, build, reward, keep and let go of entrepreneurial professionals. Our findings imply that there are still open issues in the identification, selection and reward practices, while promising approaches for training and retention exist and the low risk perception by professionals provides fertile grounds for entrepreneurial behaviour to prosper. Based on these findings, we present HR-related recommendations for fostering corporate entrepreneurship in PSFs and highlight some promising avenues for future research.