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Project Team

• Dr Joe O'Mahoney

• Dr Richard Adams

• Professor Elena Antonacopoulou

• Professor Andy Neely

Indicative Management Priorities

From research to date, the following six themes have emerged as management priorities in UK management consultancy practice. If you wish to comment, please contact Richard Adams, or click on the link following the descriptive paragraphs below.

1. Professionalisation of the industry
2. Procurement of consultancy services
3. Dealing with risk
4. The role and management of innovation in consultancy relationships
5. Consideration of alternative business models
6. Human resource issues in management consulting

1. Professionalisation of the Industry

The driver underpinning the theme of professionalism and professionalisation appeared to be the pursuit of quality both for the validation and legitimization of practice and, as a mechanism to ensure consistency in service delivery standards to customers. Important questions included:

• In consulting practice, what does professionalism mean and how can it be achieved

• What are the implications of increased professionalism, for example for quality control, customer assurance, brand identity

• Is there a role for external accreditation in management consultancy

• Where is professionalism best situated, at the occupational level (regulated and managed through professional associations) or at an organisational level (firm-level accreditation)

2. Procurement of Consultancy Services

From the perspective of potential clients, the issue of buying consultancy services was recognized to be characterized by uncertainties, so:

• How can clients make sure that they purchase the right skills sets, negotiate appropriate contractual terms and manage consultancy projects effectively?

From the point of view of practice, the procurement process was identified as negatively impacting on smaller providers, excluding their participation in some areas of the market, particularly the public sector and projects that stipulated electronic tendering:

• What opportunities and barriers does electronic tendering present in the procurement process?

The client consultant relationship has been described as a sometimes delicate interaction from which the co-production of new knowledge can emerge. However, the processes of formalisation (accreditation, standardization, formalization) may jeopardise this outcome:

• How is it possible to strike a balance between deep forms of engagement between consultant and client with the processes of accreditation, standardization and formalization without devaluing the consultancy experience?

3. Dealing with Risk

Consultancy projects are inherently risky, though professionalisation, training, brand reputation and engagement during the procurement process might provide some amelioration of the risk.

• How do professional standards and industry-wide best-practices (training, quality control and accreditation) help ameliorate risk?

• What are the client-side risks in a consultancy project and how can clients be better equipped to manage them

4. The Role and Management of Innovation in Consultancy Relationships

Reportedly, clients generally have an ambivalent attitude toward innovation though are in favour of innovative outcomes and solutions.

• Some clients are inherently more risk averse in the innovation process, what are the factors that account for this?

• What is clients' "capacity to absorb" novelty/innovation, how can this be assessed and developed?

• Is it correct to presume that the literature generally argues that smaller firms are more innovative than larger firms?

• Is it the case that larger consulting firms are more innovative than smaller consulting firms?

• What accounts for the differences, if any, between small and large firm innovativeness?

• What are the sources of innovation - where does it come from?

• In the co-production of knowledge, techniques and technologies, consultants and clients producing new knowledge, how should intellectual property rights be negotiated?

• How can competing ownership claims be negotiated?

• What rules should govern the transferability of new knowledge?

5. Consideration of Alternative Business Models

The business model of smaller practices is characterized, in an echo of the ‘make-or-buy' decisions taken by manufacturing firms, by a tendency to buy-in specific skills for temporally-bound projects.

• What business models might smaller consultancies adopt to minimise internal costs without sacrificing breadth and depth of service offer?

6. Human Resource Issues in Management Consulting

Creating conditions attractive for the recruitment, development and retention of younger consultants is, reportedly, particularly important, specifically: clarity of career path, importance of qualifications and continued professional development within the profession.

• Which career paths will help the industry attract and retain young/new talent?

• Should, or could, the industry achieve legitimacy through professional qualification?

• What would a professional qualification look like?

• What might be the nature of these qualifications?

• Does the professionalisation by qualification of other sectors (e.g. law) have lessons for consultancy?

• Given changing professional demographics, what is the career and personal development proposition of consultancy?

• How are new consultants socialised into their roles?

• Is there a relation between HR practices (e.g. induction) and attracting, inducting and socialisation of new staff?

For any further queries please contact Dr Richard Adams on r.adams@cranfield.ac.uk

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