Knowledge production in consulting teams

The central thesis of this paper is that the production of knowledge in consulting teams can neither be understood as the result of an internal interaction between clients and consultants decoupled from the wider socio-political environment nor as externally determined by socially constructed industry recipes or management fashions detached from the cognitive uniqueness of the client-consultant team. Instead, we argue that knowledge production in consulting teams is intrinsically linked to the institutional environment that not only provides resources such as funding, manpower, or legitimacy but also offers cognitive feedback through which knowledge production is influenced. By applying the theory of self-organization to the knowledge production in consulting teams, we explain how consulting teams are structured by the sociocultural environment and are structuring this environment to continue their work. The consulting team's knowledge is shaped and influenced by cognitive feedback loops that involve external collective actors such as the client organization, practice groups of consulting firms, the academic/professional community, and the general public who essentially become co-producers of consulting knowledge. Paper accepted for publication by the Scandinavian Journal of Management Acknowledgement: The authors would like to thank the editor Janne Tienari and the anonymous reviewers of the Scandinavian Journal of Management for their very helpful and constructive comments. We would also like to thank Celeste Wilderom and Tim Morris for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. The support for this research from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (research grant 01HW0168) is also acknowledged.

International Journal of Knowledge Management

Practical applications of knowledge management are hindered by a lack of linkage between the accepted data-information-knowledge hierarchy with using pragmatic approaches. Specifically, the authors seek to clarify the use of the tacit-explicit dichotomy with a deductive synthesis of complementary concepts. The authors review appropriate segments of the KM/OL literature with an emphasis on the SECI model of Nonaka and Takeuchi. Looking beyond equating the sharing of knowledge with mere socialization, the authors deduce from more recent developments a knowledge creation, nurturing and control framework. Based on a cyclic and upward-spiraling data-information-knowledge structure, the authors' proposed model affords top managers and their consultants opportunities for capturing, debating and storing richer information – as well as monitoring their progress and controlling their learning process.

In this article, we argue that a focus on the debunking of consulting knowledge has led to a disconnect between the research and the practice of management consulting. A renewed focus on consulting practice, that is, the doing of consultancy itself, affords an opportunity for bringing clients, practitioners and researchers of consulting closer together. We sketch an outline of an alternative approach to consulting practice, based not on knowledge, but on knowing, the socially situated activity whereby knowledge is applied and created. Borrowing from the practice-based theories of organizational knowledge and knowing, we explore how key aspects of consulting practice—problem solving, participation and knowledge transfer—might be handled differently when we give primacy to practice. We discuss the viability of this alternative approach, and argue that despite established relations of power and politics, the dynamic and indeterminate nature of practice environments does afford some space for this and other alternative forms of consulting practice to take hold.

Management Learning, 2009

In this article, we argue that a focus on the debunking of consulting knowledge has led to a disconnect between the research and the practice of management consulting. A renewed focus on consulting practice, that is, the doing of consultancy itself, affords an opportunity for bringing clients, practitioners and researchers of consulting closer together. We sketch an outline of an alternative approach to consulting practice, based not on knowledge, but on knowing, the socially situated activity whereby knowledge is applied and created. Borrowing from the practice-based theories of organizational knowledge and knowing, we explore how key aspects of consulting practice—problem solving, participation and knowledge transfer—might be handled differently when we give primacy to practice. We discuss the viability of this alternative approach, and argue that despite established relations of power and politics, the dynamic and indeterminate nature of practice environments does afford some spa...

Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 1994

Presents the results of a first research survey of consulting firms within the United Kingdom. Examines the usefulness of knowledge typology as a way of categorizing firms and the differences, if any, between the firms. Explores the firms′ sources of knowledge, knowledge networks, transfer of knowledge or expertise, and consultant knowledge and skills. Discusses the implications of the survey and presents an agenda for action which comprises of future research into the usefulness of the typologies. Concludes by saying that a more precise instrument is needed to classify parts of organizations as well as the whole and there is a need to examine the particular problems of managing a consultancy firm.

Four footings of the consulting act are derived from a typification of the social constructionist perspective, and it is argued that consultants and consultees enact the social performances of (1) Facilitation, (2) Tyranny, (3) Discourse or (4) Despair. Consultancies are criticised for too often being tyrannical productions where the consultant (1) arrives with solution(s) in hand, (2) manipulates the consultee to generate suitable problems, (3) applies pre-patterned solutions to the problems so derived, and (4) abandons the scene after being paid. Reflections on this situation and preferred courses of action are discussed.

2001

Abstract The diversity of management consulting has long been recognised by mainstream commentators, but the more critical literature often overlooks this feature. This paper explores different consulting roles by developing a typology based on two dimensions of consulting work: the nature of the knowledge base that consultants purport to use in their work, and the extent to which the boundaries between consultant and client are permeable.

2002

This contribution discusses the knowledge production in a consulting engineering company. Consulting engineering practices and knowledge areas undergo rapid development, which make a description by discipline less obvious, but the focus here is on the production of buildings, mobilising mainly mechanical and electrical engineering, building physics, project and construction management. This kind of engineering is typically pictured as a knowledge intensive activity, but also involve large elements of routinized work such as CAD-drawing. Building on a five month emic ethnographic study, it is illustrated how the organisational knowledge production in a medium size consulting engineering company relies on a bricolage of practical experiences, formalised information, external alliances and customer demands. Several management initiatives address the production and management of knowledge. Information technology, organisation, office design, training and other human resource oriented management tools all play a role. The succession of initiatives does not take place as part of an all-encompassing strategy, although such a strategy does formally exist. Rather it mirrors conditions of possibility occurring over time and the ability to improvise by central actors. The initiatives can thus be seen as a combination of chasing options or just drifting with them and at the same time developing the internal resources as much as possible (pacing the internal options). Understanding knowledge management in this broader sense enables an analysis of what different kinds of knowledge production "deliver" under the circumstances. Theoretically the contribution builds on a critique of mainstream knowledge management positions, which picture knowledge as either a well defined tangible entity or describe how it can quickly become one. Although community of practice approaches dismantle such overly rationalistic perceptions of knowledge, they still suffer from a belief of the stability and non political features of the knowledge production. It is suggested to view the knowledge production as relying on temporary network-building related to drifting along with opportunities, problem setting and solution formulation. It implies continual reconfiguring of some elements of knowledge in coexistence with longer term and more stable basic knowledge elements. The local engineering cultures both preserve the long term elements as well as host the dynamic new ones. The cultures are characterised by an orientation towards designing with new techniques in new ways. The strong project dynamic of the company preserves and develops these cultures. Project and department managers interact with their external network constantly chasing new options of projects, and partly using them to pace certain internal competency building. It is as a totality creating a drift, which leaves the conscious top level management initiatives as a somewhat sideshow.

Management Learning, 2011

This article examines the active client of management consultancy as a key agent in managing and mediating knowledge flows across organisational boundaries. From a qualitative study of a particular case of active clients -internal consultants managing their external counterparts -three boundary-spanning roles are identified. Active clients can act as a 'gatekeeper', 'broker' and 'partner' with respect to both consultants and the knowledge they bring. These roles are shown to vary according to a client's expertise, formal project responsibilities and personal reputation, as well as the different phases of consulting projects. They not only elucidate an otherwise neglected or static dimension of management consultancy -client activity -but highlight the dynamic and essentially political character of serving as knowledge barriers and/or bridges in the intermediation and co-production of management knowledge across organisational boundaries.

Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2009

Increasing attention is being given to professional services in organisation and management theory. Whether the focus is on organisational forms or service processes such as knowledge transfer, the role of clients is often seen as central. However, typically, clients continue to be presented in a largely static, pre-structured and even monolithic way. While some recognition is given to the diversity of organisational clients and, to a lesser extent, individual clients, little attention has been given to the process by which 'the client' is actively constructed, negotiated and contested by actors. This process generates changing and multiple client positions according to different interpretive logics. Drawing on different research projects on management consultancy, we argue that what is meant by the client cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the notion of 'the client' is (inter)actively-produced, dynamic and potentially heterogeneous. This has implications for our understanding of management consultancy and professional services as well as client-consultant dynamics, including ways in which they share knowledge, develop relationships and engage in project activities.