Yvette Taminiau is Strategic Management Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Organization Studies, within Faculty of Social Sciences, in the Netherlands.
In the last two decades years, she has conducted a number of large studies on two main topics: 1) professions under institutional pressure, in particular the consultancy and accountancy profession and 2) the development of skills by consultants and accountants. The first relates to the social and regulatory complexities faced by large accounting/consultancy organisations—specifically, the so-called “Big Four”: Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC; because these institutions are powerful, dominant actors in contemporary society, it is of the utmost importance for social scientists to critically study them. For example, the expansion of the Big Four accountant firms into adjacent professional fields (i.e., law, tax advice and management consultancy) was considered to be a crucial move that led to their current success and influence. They have evolved into powerful, multidisciplinary professional service firms and have become larger and more internationalised than many of the clients they serve. This expansion, which is referred to as “colonisation” in extant literature, and tensions between the different professions are important topics of study.
The second strand of research focusses on the skills that are utilised by these entrepreneurial professionals, such as, amongst other things, establishing and maintaining client relationships, career development and facilitating diversity. With regard to the topic of client relationship development, this research interest culminated into a large research project, in which 250 consultants and accountants were interviewed by Master students. The interviews were conducted in 11 countries in Europe, the US and Canada. This study has received large media coverage in the FD, the Dutch financial newspaper, and resulted in many publications.
Previously, Yvette was at Rotterdam School of Management, where she obtained her PhD on Ph-D, Business Administration, at the Rotterdam School of Management (2001) Ph-D thesis research topic: The impact of European regulation upon the European oil and automotive industry, and she was a research visitor at the University Visiting scholar at the Alberta School of Business, Edmonton, Canada; London School of Economics, London; British Council Fellowship at PREST, Centre for Science and Technology Policy and Management Research of Manchester Business School.
