Management Consultants

Conceptual Overview

Until the 1990s, the literature on consulting could be characterized as being prescriptive, uncritical with an overarching emphasis on how to act as a consultant. With the growing importance of consulting, organizational scholars began to address the role of management consultants. In this section, we will review some of the important contributions. The historical basis of management consultancy lies arguably in the movement popularizing the work of F. W. Taylor. Earnest industrial engineers sought to spread the principles of scientific management far and wide. In a fascinating historical study, Matthias Kipping in 2002 argued in Trapped in Their Wave: The Evolution of Management Consultancies that the 20th century witnessed waves of development of management consultancy. Like us, he views Taylorism as ushering in management consultancy. Further waves of development included the strategy advice of the 1970s and 1980s and more recently the information technology boom. In each case, the dominant consultancies were those that were able to capture and in some cases define the zeitgeist of the time.

Turning to the rise of management consultancy, numerous scholars have highlighted the dramatic growth in the size of the industry. The Kennedy Information Service reported that the industry was worth some $125 billion in 2004, up 80 fold on two decades previously. What was it that fueled this staggering growth? There were a number of factors at play: the socio-economic restructuring in western—and then ex-Soviet and eastern—economies, globalization, the rise of managerialism as a discourse, the marketization of the state, the commercialization of large accounting firms, and the developments in information technology. The corollary is that large management consultancies are now important players within the global economy, to the extent that some commentators have suggested that their influence is such that we are seeing the rise of the McKinsey state—a reference to one of the most influential [Page 848]consultancies. Given their importance, it is worth considering in more detail the role that consultants play in organizations.

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