Management consulting and management consultants
What is management consulting? What role do management consultants play?
The functions and types of services offered by business consultants are both indistinct and complex. There is an abundance of information examining the role of business consultants, but first, the reason why corporations utilize the services of external professionals must be tackled. Massey[1] as well as Pellegrinelli[2] note that at present, it is common practice for the services of business consultants to be employed by top-level managers to help their organizations select “the correct strategies from the abundance of available ones.”[3].
Different schools of management consulting
The literature suggests that there are different schools of thought on the role played by business consultants. It is argued by Some that consultants mainly fulfill a single role, while others, like Lippitt and Lippitt[6] think that consultants ‘perform several functions that they consider appropriate for the customer, the circumstances, and their style’. Chapman[7] appears to agree with Lippitt’s argument.
Relationship between management consultant and client
Indeed, when the capability of business consultants that work with non-profit organizations was investigated, Chapman[8] concluded that “there are a variety of roles that can be filled by consultants, depending on what the situation demands.” Others see business consulting as a practice in which both consultants and clients equally participate and benefit.
Massey and Walker[9] presume that “if the roles selected by the consultant are appropriate and align with the expectations of the client, then the process of management is unimportant as the assignment already has a very good chance of success in attaining the agreed goal.”
Development of management consulting
In those early days, the knowledge provided by consultants was not only new but also important to organizational strategy and consequently molded much of modern management practice. And so management consulting was viewed as both a carrier and an influencer of new management strategies, ideas, and organizational forms among organizations[10].
It is argued by Fincham and Clark that a lot of the writing on management consulting developed in the mid-1950s through the mid-1980s was written primarily from a single perspective, aimed at Organizational Development[11].
The strand in the literature that was critical was focused on the techniques and strategies employed by consultants in convincing clients that they offered a high-quality service. In this critical literature, the problem in question is the method used by consultants to convince their clients and show them their knowledge. When Compared to Organizational Development, the critical view doesn’t automatically assume that consultants play the role of professional helpers[12].
The statement that consultants were constantly acting in their client’s best interests and the values they claimed to provide for their clients were mostly questioned. This was then mainly answered by observing the type of consulting strategies and advice given, along with the power to influence[13].
Rather, management consultants were perceived as interlopers who used theatrical skills or impressions to convince clients that their services were valuable. As a result, critical literature became greatly interested in the knowledge and rhetorical skills provided by them[14].
Managers are plagued by two parallel challenges during their working lives. The first is how to control the organization, and the second is how to manage their identities as managers[15]. Consequently, the skills of the consultant play an essential role, and in such a way that makes it possible to improve, change, control, and reinforce a positive managerial identity that is positive[16]. The skill of the consultant lies in their presentation of themselves as specialists to persuade clients of the necessity of their services.
The relationship between the consultant and the client is depicted as a temporary, arm's-length, and contractual relationship where providing the client with the service of knowledge is the goal.
It is presumed that the client and consultant are independent of each other; this makes it possible for the consultant to view organizational problems objectively and to remain isolated from hidden agendas, power struggles, etc.[17]. Furthermore, a main feature of the relationship is that it is clearly defined when it comes to duration, terms, and content.
Academic interest in management consulting
Academic interest in management consulting has grown rapidly in the last few years as the size and economic impact of the consulting industry have grown, particularly during the 80s and 90’s, as that was the time when the management consulting industry grew heavily and became one of the knowledge economy’s top-growing sectors.
About 80% of today’s firms were set up during this period[4]. Business academics, the business media, management gurus, and consultants were all perceived by many researchers as the parties who led to the formation, distribution, and transfer of new ideas into management[5].
Roles and functions played by consultants
A list of roles and functions played by consultants has been identified by some academics who, over time, have been trying to ascertain the role played by business consultants. Steele[18] revealed how wide the function of consultants is. Nine roles that consultants adopt while working on a client’s project were identified: ritual pig, advocate, talisman, monitor, clock, barbarian, detective, student, and teacher.
Others[19] acknowledged two roles that are basic to business consultants: “the resource role” and “the process role”. The former is when consultants help their clients with their appropriate knowledge and experience, and the latter is when they help the organization solve its issues by making them aware of the organizational processes[20].
The element most significant to innovation consultants with respect to their knowledge claims is building a collaboration between practice and theory, which means that they can “design a future that is desirable and devise ways to bring about this future.”[21]. Innovation is therefore often sought after by professionals.
In the framework of technical rationality, a bearer of uncontested knowledge is a professional. An area between profession and vocation (where uncontested knowledge is unavailable) is addressed by an innovation consultant.
A profession and a vocation are complete opposites. A profession consists of applying general principles to specific problems that are specific[22]. While knowledge is the basis of professions, vocations come from passion and are based on emotion. Ratio and general principles are not applied with a vocation but instead use the ‘heart’ in problem-solving.
A useful set of metaphors that aim to better understand the roles of consultants has been provided by Massey[23]. Three consultants were asked to use metaphors to describe their roles; the first consultant compared his functions to those of a pilot ship taking a voyage. The second one chose to compare himself to gardeners looking after an ecosystem, while the third described his role as a guide. This shows that the role of a business consultant is subjective. It helps us realize how hard it is to define.
Management consultant as a business doctor
One of the first writers to suggest that the roles taken by consultants be classified was Tilles. Three roles were seen by him as being assigned to the consultant. These were “business doctors dispensing cures”, “information suppliers,” and “sellers of services”[24]. The first paragraph paints the consultant as a business doctor who cures an ill patient. The second defines the role as an individual who supports the information flow, while the third defines the consultant as someone involved in a sales-purchase transaction (traditional).
Generally, they are seen as professional doctors or helpers who have the cure for an organization’s illnesses[25]. Clark’s reasons for this are largely because many of management consulting’s writers were themselves successful consultants[26]. The roles sought by them, therefore, reflect their understanding of what roles they think should be adopted by consultants to create a successful relationship with the client.
Based on research, it might be concluded that the focus is on the services offered by different consultants and the organization. The organization’s environment has far less attention paid to it, meaning that innovation consulting has no real professional approach because if there was, a consultant would have to address their unbiased knowledge of the organization’s environment and the reality of their innovation.
In this respect, the consultant is focused more on the practical facets of the consultant-client relationship and not just on the theories and knowledge that help with achieving innovation.
The identified methodologies in consulting are those of doctor-patient and process consulting[27]. The consultant is greatly focused on the process and not on the results of the process; this suggests that this is a process-based approach. The depiction of the organization in the ‘change process’ denotes that the model is a doctor-patient one, where a good diagnosis leads to results that are good for the organization.
These two approaches take the client’s situation into account and do not claim to have a body of knowledge that is ‘objective’; this is usually the case with an ‘expert’ approach. In the source domain of metaphors, consultants apply variety. The logical nature of consulting calls for logical conceptual metaphors.
A management consultant is a mediator between a client’s cognition and their ‘reality.
As mentioned earlier, the consultant serves as a mediator between the client’s cognition and their ‘reality’[28]. In the process of knowledge adoption, the mediator-consultant depends on direct communications with the innovation surrounding them and also on anticipated long-term, indirect innovations. In this respect, the consultant is not a free change agent but has their own network forces, expertise, and preferences that form public opinion on reality.
Management consulting literature and bibliography
[1] Massey C., Understanding the Impact of a Consultant’s Worldview: The Use of Metaphor in a Diagnostic Exercise, „Journal of European Industrial Training”, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2003, pp. 304–312,
[2] Pellegrinelli S., Managing the Interplay and Tensions of Consulting Interventions: The Consultant-Client Relationship as Mediation and Reconciliation, Journal of Management Development”, Vol. 21, No. 5, 2002, p. 343.
[3] Massey C., Understanding the Impact of a Consultant’s Worldview: The Use of Metaphor in a Diagnostic Exercise, „Journal of European Industrial Training”, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2003, pp. 304.
[4] Ernst B., Kieser A., In search of Explanations for the Consulting Explosion, [In] Sahlin-Greiner K.L., Metzger R., Consulting to Management, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1983.
[5] Abrahamson E., Fairchild E., Management Fashions: Lifecycles, Triggers, and Collective Learning Processes, „Administrative Science Quarterly,”, No. 44, 1999, pp. 708–740.
[6] Lippitt G., Lippitt R., The consulting process in action, University Associates, San Diego, 1986, p. 57.
[7] Chapman J., Do process consultants need different skills when working with nonprofits?, Leadership and Organization Development Journal”, Vol. 19, No. 4, 1998, pp. 211-215.
[8] Chapman J., Do process consultants need different skills when working with nonprofits?, Leadership and Organization Development Journal”, Vol. 19, No. 4, 1998, p. 212.
[9] Massey C., Walker R., Aiming for organizational learning: Consultants as agents of change, „The Learning Organization”, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1999, p. 38.
[10] Kipping M., Consultancies, Institutions, and the Diffusion of Taylorism in Britain, Germany, and France, 1920s to 1950’s, „Business History”, No. 39/4, 1997, pp. 67–83.
[11] Fincham R., Clark T., Introduction: The Emergence of Critical Perspectives on Consulting in Critical Consulting: New Perspectives on the Management Advice Industry, Blackwell Business Ltd. 2002, p. 5.
[12] Fincham R., Clark T., Introduction: The Emergence of Critical Perspectives on Consulting in Critical Consulting: New Perspectives on the Management Advice Industry, Blackwell Business Ltd. 2002, p. 6.
[13] Fincham R., Clark T., Introduction: The Emergence of Critical Perspectives on Consulting in Critical Consulting: New Perspectives on the Management Advice Industry, Blackwell Business Ltd. 2002.
[14] Kipping M., Engwall L., Management Consulting: Emergence and Dynamics of a Knowledge Industry, Oxford University Press, 2003.
[15] Watson T., In Search of Management: Culture, Chaos, and Control in Managerial Work, Routledge, London, 2001.
[16] Clark T., Salaman G., The use of metaphor in the client-consultant relationship: A study of management consultants organization development, „Metaphorical Explorations,”, Vol. 3, Pitman, London 1996, pp. 154–174.
Clark T., Salaman G., Telling Tales: Management Gurus' Narratives and the Construction of Managerial Identity, Journal of Management Studies”, No. 35(2), 1998, pp. 137–161.
[17] Kubr M., Management consulting: A guide to the profession, International Labour Office, Geneva 1996; Kyrö P., The Management Consulting Industry Described by Using the Concept of ‘Profession’, Doctoral Thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Helsinki 1995; Ernst B., Kieser A., In search of Explanations for the Consulting Explosion, [In] Sahlin-Greiner K.L., Metzger R., Consulting to Management, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1983.
[18] Steele F., Consulting for Organizational Change, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1975.
[19] E.g., Kubr M., Management consulting: A guide to the profession, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1996.
[20] Kubr M., Management consulting: A guide to the profession, International Labour Office, Geneva 1996, p. 58.
[21] Schön D., The Reflective Practitioner How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, 1983, p. 16.
[22] Schön D., The Reflective Practitioner How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, 1983
[23] Massey C., Understanding the Impact of a Consultant’s Worldview: The Use of Metaphor in a Diagnostic Exercise, „Journal of European Industrial Training”, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2003, p. 307.
[24] Tilles S., Understanding the Consultant’s Role, Harward Business Review, November-December, 1961, pp. 87–99; quoted in Clark T., Managing Consultants: Consulting as the Management of Impressions, Open University Press 1995, p. 88.
[25] Clark T., Managing Consultants: Consulting as the Management of Impressions, Open University Press 1995, p. 89.
[26] Clark T., Managing Consultants: Consulting as the Management of Impressions, Open University Press 1995, p. 89.
[27] Schein, E.H., Process Consultation: Lessons for Managers and Consultants, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1969.
[28] Schön D., The Reflective Practitioner How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, 1983; McQuail D., McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory, 5th ed., Sage, London, 2005, p. 84.