Consultants and experts in management consulting firms

2004

The management consulting industry has been growing exponentially during the last two decades influencing the relationships between business schools, corporations and universities, achieving a significant role as a modern "knowledge creator". This thesis studies the process of knowledge creation undertaken by management consultants. The academic mode of creating knowledge as described by was used to direct this exploration of consultants as a knowledge creating community. The purpose of using the scientific method of knowledge creation is not to compare or to judge consulting knowledge, but to use it as a way of entry to explore consultants' practices. In a complementary way to Kuhn's core concepts, a brief Foucauldian overview identified concepts like inclusion and exclusion, discourse and the notion of practices, which are used in the analysis. An empirical research was conducted focusing specifically on a group of practicing consultants in New Zealand. Thirteen consultants who specialize in corporate governance advice were interviewed. Corporate governance was chosen as a field of advice because it is a clearly separable area of management consulting. In this study, the categories of community and paradigm served as a point of entry to explore knowledge creation practices.

2008

This study defines an aspect of consultant knowledge that provides credibility without claiming unrealistic status for a field like consulting. Our focus is the "sector knowledge" that consultants accumulate which derives from repeated assignments in the industrial sector in which the client organization resides. This has been underresearched partly because of an emphasis oil knowledge as technique and method. But knowledge configured around the sector enables consultants to play the role of the outside expert and draw oil a language and experiences held in common with the client. The paper explores the role of consultants as sector intermediaries through a case study of contemporary management consulting in a UK local authority. We see "the sector" as air alternative type of knowledge formation salient for a client-centered occupation like consulting. We also explore sector knowledge as a negotiated setting and dispel overly simple notions of know-how being "brought to" the client.

Journal of Management and Sustainability, 2013

In the evolution of strategic disciplines much of the knowledge produced has been widely diffused by the management consulting industry. But can this sector be regarded as knowledge intensive activity based on true structure of expertise knowledge? One way to understand if we can consider that sector as a source of knowledge dissemination is realizing its relationship with the market in terms of knowledge, rather than identify only as a set of static techniques to be applied as in most of times they have been doing. This article presents itself as a reflection about the real reasons for the increasing use ofmanagement consulting services, indicating simultaneously that can really be a true field of opportunities for the academic class if the study will focused in the establishment and institutionalization of micropractices (strategy-as-practice) that there are used and its implications in terms of organizational results.

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.

2002

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.

Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2010

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 socio-cultural 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.

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.

Organization, 2009

Management consultancy is seen by many as a key agent in the adoption of new management ideas and practices in organisations. Two contrasting views are dominant -consultants as innovators, bringing new knowledge to their clients, or as legitimating client knowledge. Those few studies which examine directly the flow of knowledge through consultancy in projects with clients favour the innovator view and highlight the important analytical and practical value of boundaries -consultants as both knowledge and organisational outsiders. Likewise, in the legitimator view, the consultants' role is seen in terms of the primacy of the organisational boundary. By drawing on a wider social science literature on boundaries and studies of inter-organisational knowledge flow and management consultancy more generally, this polarity is seen as problematic, especially at the level of the consulting project. An alternative framework of boundary relations is developed and presented which incorporates their multiplicity, dynamism and situational specificity. This points to a greater complexity and variability in knowledge flow and its potential than is currently recognised. This is significant not only in terms of our understanding of management consultancy and inter-organisational knowledge dynamics and boundaries, but of a critical understanding of the role of management consultancy more generally.