Learning to be a lawyer in transnational law firms: communities of ...

ensembles and economic behaviours and practices. For Gertler (2004, 7, original emphasis) any
analysis of such relationships must “maintain a clear distinction between institutions at the
societal level, attitudes and values (often shared by individuals within society, but ultimately
experiences at the level of the individual), and economic behaviour as expressed in the industrial
practices of firms and the individuals that comprise them”. As such, Gertler (2004) draws
attention to how institutions define workers’ attitudes and values which then cause and are
displayed in workers’ nationally variable best practices and behaviours. 1 Both Whitley (1998)
and Gertler (2004) also show that TNCs tend to develop best practices and behavioural norms
defined by home-country institutions. When operating in a different institutional environment
this means, norms and practices have to be exported and implemented in an alien institutional
context or the norms and practices of the host context adopted. Or a hybrid form that combines
features of the home and host country norms and practices has to be developed as a compromise.
[insert table 2]
In the context of this paper, the link made between institutions, attitudes and values, and
practices and behaviours is significant in that a similar story to that told by Whitley (1998) and
Gertler (2004) about manufacturers can be told about the relationship between national
institutional systems relating to the legal profession and the attitudes, values, behaviours and
practices of lawyers. For example, Morgan and Quack (2005) show that, as a result of the
nationally specific negotiations between the state and the legal profession that form the ‘national
system of the professions’ (see Burrage et al., 1990; Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2007), in
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