Seeking Opportunities: International Market Selection by European Engineering Consultancies

Over the last few decades professional service firms have increasingly expanded their activities beyond national borders and established international offices throughout the world. This paper describes and analyses spatial patterns of internationalisation within the engineering consulting sector. By mapping expansion biographies of European engineering consulting firms and conducting dynamic Cox regression models, external factors influencing international market selection are examined. It is shown that current spatial patterns are only partly shaped by the declining importance of cross‐national distance. Instead, market seeking motivations and the exploitation of time‐critical opportunities appear to be of more significance. Further, changing patterns of market selection are observed.