The Anatomy of Network Building In Management Consulting Firms

2005

The focus in research upon resources, dynamic capabilities and competences has challenged firms to apply these concepts to improve their competitive position. Management consulting firms may assist clients in these efforts. However, the roles that management consulting firms fulfill in these processes can differ considerably and are under-researched. Therefore, insight in these different roles and the impact of these roles on clients' competitive positioning in their industries is required. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework that highlights the importance of distinguishing both roles and the implications for management consulting firms and for their clients. We illustrate the framework by elaborating on the relationship between both roles and the strategic renewal context of client firms. We conclude by pointing out the increasing importance of the competence leverage role of management consulting firms and how this development might contribute to a more hypercompetitive context for their clients.

The ITB Journal, 2002

The relationship between management consultants and their clients plays a key part in the success of consulting firms. To develop an understanding of the dynamics of the clientconsultant relationship, the authors reviewed literature in the areas of intangible professional services, impression management, perception and the interaction process. A model is proposed and the authors use a case study to emphasise areas highlighted by the literature. The authors contend that impression management, aided by positive perception and the development of the client-consultant relationship, is an important motivational force in securing consulting projects. It upholds the model for understanding the client-consultant relationship.

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, 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.

Management Consulting Journal

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.

Business History Review, 2007

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.

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.

Alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, networks and everyday working groups depend on collaboration to sustain their membership and achieve their tasks. This paper turns the spotlight on the visible and invisible forces that shape consultants' successful and unsuccessful collaborations. Whether the consulting task is perceived as straightforward or more complex, many consulting collaborations fail, some never get off the ground and others flounder at some point along the way.

Journal of Business Research, 1996

Sweeping changes in the global marketplace have caused firms to restructure their organizations. In an increasing number of firms this has led to the development of a network organization. This article presents a brief survey of various disciplines that have come to use network concepts as part of their repertoire, such as sociology, economics, industrial marketing and purchasing. From this survey we conclude that there exists a gap between academic research and management practice. There is a need for a more practitioner-oriented approach. The main part of the article discusses TeamNet Tools, a management-oriented, integrated set of concepts, tools, and software designed to develop and manage networks, and thus bridging part of the gap between theory and practice. TeamNet Tools revolves around boundary crossing teamnets that can exist at different levels, such as small teams or strategic alliances. The discussion focuses on the main elements of TeamNet Tools and offers a critical analysis. The article concludes with the observation that, in addition to consultancy-based efforts such as TeamNet Tools, f~rther knowledge and understanding about networks can only be achieved through true cross-fertilization between theory and practice. This requires the initiation of systematic research on questions that are relevant to practitioners, leading to an accepted body of network theory based on tested hypotheses, j BUSN RES 1996. 35.29-39 adical changes in the worldwide competitive arena have caused a large number of firms to restructure their operations. Reengineering efforts, combined with the application of advanced information technology that offers everincreasing performance at decreasing costs, frequently lead to new organizational structures that are:

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.

Arbeits-und Thesenpapier im Rahmen der 19th EGOS …, 2003

Networks, which span organizational boundaries, are an important source of knowledge.

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.

European Management Review, 2011

business. Yet few management studies explicitly focus on the consulting industry. What role do management consultant companies play, and do they contribute to clients' activities in similar ways? Can these questions be addressed using scholarly categories? This paper tackles this understudied topic through an analysis and elaboration of existing literature, which suggests new avenues for management research and offers fresh reflections for practice. In particular we develop a number of propositions, centred on the behaviours of consultants and the sources of consultants' competitive advantages, which inspire future investigations in an area relevant to both academics and practitioners.