Research On Motivations And Location Of Professional Service Firm Internationalization

As a highly knowledge and skill-intensive industry,professional service firm(PSF)is growing up with the change of economy structure service-oriented and the sophistication of the industrial structure.In developed countries,PSF is not only a emerging growth sector of service industry,but also becomes an important sector of trade contribution.Compared with the developed countries,PSF in our country starts late,the starting point is low and the development is stagnant.“Bringing in” and “go out” are two essential ways to promote international development and competitiveness of PSF,which needs follow and cater to the regulation of PSF internationalization.Given this,the paper firstly analyzes the development of PSF and development of PSF internationalization.On the basis of analyzing motivations and location of PSF internationalization,the paper carries on empirical research by using Chinese 31 provinces panel data to establish a five variable panel data model.In order to verify motivations and location of PSF internationalization in the reality,this paper selects the world famous PSF,PwC,as a case study.It analyzes motivations of PwC internationalization and location in China,which further verifies and supplement the empirical results.The empirical results and case studies show that PSF has done international expansion by following customers in the early process of internationalization,while in late period,motivation of internationalization is market opportunities of host countries.When developing countries are host countries,seeking market opportunities motivation is most obvious.The location of PSF is greatly influenced by market opportunities,human resources supply and foreign direct investment in host countries,and is less affected by the number of local listed companies.Depending on all above study and combined with the Chinese PSF current development situation,this paper puts forward that China should attract international advanced PSF and obtain the knowledge spillover effect through cooperation and competition with international advanced PSF.Meanwhile,PSF in china should follow Chinese enterprise,seize market opportunities and develop new markets to enhance it’s level and competitiveness of internationalization.