WORLD CITIES AND THE LIMITS TO GLOBAL CONTROL - A CASE-STUDY OF EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRMS IN EUROPE LEADING CITIES

Saskia Sassen has recently argued that more attention ought to be give n to the role of producer services in the production of global command capability in world cities. Little is known for instance, about the c ondition of markets in world cities for various forms of global knowle dge, and the extent to which different producer services are capable o f producing such knowledge. If producer services are vital in determin ing firms' command and control 'reach', then it is clear that a full u nderstanding of their current capabilities is essential if we are to c omprehend the command competencies of different western cities. Focusi ng upon a case study of one producer service, this paper seeks to exam ine the role played by executive search firms in furnishing company he adquarters in leading European cities with a global executive recruitm ent capability. Our analysis suggests that this service has developed largely to serve independent national markets; a fact partly explained by the limited development of a market for international search to da te but also attributable to the lack of development of an infrastructu re capable of undertaking international executive recruitment. We argu e, nevertheless, that the industry is currently restructuring such tha t furnishing multinationals with an ability to recruit managerial elit es across the globe from European cities is becoming a central objecti ve. We point to a number of problems firms are facing, however, in tra nsforming institutional structures geared around domestic search into international networks capable of operationalizing international searc h. In the European context, working through these difficulties would a ppear to be being undertaken at the European and not global level, sug gesting that this service may be better conceived as striving to creat e pan-European command capability rather than global command capabilit y.