In professional services, for example law or accountancy, the term managed firm denotes an organisation in which individual autonomy of partners is selectively surrendered to a dedicated team whose sole or major function is management of the firm.
This practice stands in contrast to traditional models of the professional firm in which responsibilities for operational and strategic issues are divided up amongst partners and carried out alongside their professional duties, competing with them for attention.
The managed firm model may be more closely followed in the accountancy sector than amongst law firms and amongst larger, particularly internationally-oriented, organisations than smaller ones, necessity dictating that partners compromise between personal control and efficiency.
Famous quotes containing the words managed and/or firm:
“Every woman who visited the Fair made it the center of her orbit. Here was a structure designed by a woman, decorated by women, managed by women, filled with the work of women. Thousands discovered women were not only doing something, but had been working seriously for many generations ... [ellipsis in source] Many of the exhibits were admirable, but if others failed to satisfy experts, what of it?”
—Kate Field (1838–1908)
“Although a firm swat could bring a recalcitrant child swiftly into line, the changes were usually external, lasting only as long as the swatter remained in view....Permanent transformation had to be internal....The habits of self discipline, as laborious and frustrating as they were to achieve, offered the only real possibility of keeping children safe from their own excesses as well as the omnipresent dangers of society.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)