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Case Study

Deloitte Europe: Building a culture of cross-border collaboration

By Daniel R. Denison and Ivy Buche

16 pages

December 2015

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Reference: IMD-7-1627

The case describes the unique strengths of member-firm organizational structure at Deloitte, the largest professional services firm worldwide, in 2013. Deloitte Europe’s 25 country-based member firms provided a strong presence in each country and created a resilient structure that was very well adapted to local needs. But with continued growth in cross-border business, clients started demanding greater levels of global service and coordination among individual member firms. Deloitte’s 15-person executive committee of the EMEA Collaboration Agreement (ECA) needed to respond. How should they organize so that the country-based member firms could better collaborate to meet the demands of their clients and also create significant value for Deloitte? They considered three major initiatives: i) the expansion of Deloitte University Europe; ii) the growing importance of client and industry initiatives to create cross-border market segments by industry; and iii) the growth of multi-country member firms – single firms that spanned multiple countries. Which option would best serve Deloitte to build a culture of cross-border collaboration?

Learning Objective

1) Understand the underpinnings and value of a member-firm organizational structure. 2) Discuss the role of a corporate university as a mechanism for building cross-border collaboration. 3) Identify industry verticals spanning across countries to add to the organization structure to build and share industry-specific expertise. 4) Recognize the challenges in building a culture for collaboration among cross-border member firms.

Keywords

Corporate University, Organizational Culture

Settings

Europe
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Business Management Services, Professional Training and Coaching
2013

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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