Why I Study Management Consulting

‘A Professor of Consulting eh? I didn’t know they existed!’

I probably get this response from someone once a fortnight and as far as I know, it is true – I was the first, and think I am the only Professor of Consulting in the world. It is also true that I didn’t expect to become one.

When I left corporate consulting (twenty years ago!) to come to academia, I thought I would end up researching digital technology (my old consulting specialism).

But, when I arrived, I quickly realised that MBA students were crying out for consulting skills and knowledge and there was little to satisfy this need, either in terms of research, books or existing courses.

As I established my research and increasing number of my old colleagues bumped up against partner, started their own firms and came to me for advice on growing a consulting firm.

I was always slightly embarrassed that there wasn’t much quality evidence on this topic, which is why I’ve made it my concern for the last ten years or so.

But aside from demand, what about supply? Why do I find consulting such a fascinating industry to study?

Many people believe that ‘consulting’ was a nineteenth-century invention, but the provision of management advice can be traced back to wherever there were complex co-ordination problems: biblical kings had prophets, Persian sultans had viziers, and the Mafia had consiglieres.

Yet, the dedicated business of management advice grew out of the increasing complexity of organizations after the Industrial Revolution.

Early consultancies focused on achieving efficiencies through ‘scientific management’ but later developed new services to meet an increasing array of client challenges, from leadership development and training through to IT strategy and environmental greenwashing.

As a result, spend on consulting has grown an average of 8% a year for the last century when adjusted for inflation.

Other than its continued growth, recent attention to management consultancy from the media and academia has been driven by four concerns.

1. The ethical implications of advice to powerful decision-makers. As an industry consultancy suffers from a series of potential conflicts of interest which can result in inadequate advice being given to clients.

Such conflicts include access to client secrets vs. providing ‘best practice’ advice, the conflict between the audit function and the consultancy function of the same firms, as well as the imbalance in power between experts and non-experts when the relationship is remunerated.

2. The growing influence of consultancy in new areas such as governments, local councils, education and non-profit organisations. The increasing and significant spend of public money on highly paid consultants does not always sit easy with tax-payers and other stakeholders, especially when the efficacy of that advice is questionable.

3. The involvement of management consultancy (with banks and the World Trade Organization), in imposing neoliberalism on developing countries.

Highlighted consequences of this involvement have included higher utility prices following privatizations and lower levels of job security following deregulation of labour markets.

4. The question of whether consulting advice works. Consultants are often depicted as ‘witch-doctors’ or ‘snake-oil salesmen’ who sell clients overpriced and ineffective (repackaged) solutions.

However, there is also considerable evidence of clients becoming significantly more sophisticated and adept in their purchasing and use of consultancy, making their characterization as ‘victims’ less credible.

Ethical considerations aside, the consulting industry reflects and contributes to several wider sociological and management themes such as those below:

1. Consultancies are central in the development and dissemination of management ideas, and thus provide fertile ground for those interested in understanding knowledge dynamics: how are new ideas created and how to they travel?

2. Consultants themselves not only manifest an ambiguous and dynamic skill-set but are also increasingly the model for managers in non-consulting organizations such as charities, Universities and the public sector.

This makes the industry useful to those interested in the changing boundaries between consultants, clients and other stakeholders.

3. As management consultancy can be described as ‘professional services’, ‘knowledge-intensive firms’ and also a ‘weak profession’, it provides an interesting arena for a number of academics examining how different fields are contested and claimed by different professions.

In short, I study and write about consulting partially because it is interesting in itself, but also because it holds up a mirror to a changing and complex society.