How do new professional service firms strategically position themselves in fields where developing a favourable external reputation is critical to performance? Are certain positioning strategies more effective than others? This study reveals that most professional service firm start-ups attempt...

Our conception of the ideal organization has changed from the machine-like efficiency of Weberian bureaucracy to a post-industrial ideal ( Bell, 1973 ) in which organizations spurn the bureaucratic form to become more adaptive, receptive and generative. Such ideal organizations, we are told,...