Search

I begin to explore some of the issues involved to help stimulate debate and empirical research on what might be termed (socially) ‘responsible consulting’ (see also Sturdy 2023). How novel, radical, and comprehensive are these developments and what are the enabling or limiting factors? And finally, what does such a ‘normative turn’ imply, if anything, for the dominant critiques of consultancy and the need for improved governance?

In the context of management and organisational literature, boredom has largely been seen in individual, psychological and negative terms, both for those experiencing it and for organisational outcomes. Through selective references to a wider sociological, historical and philosophical set of perspectives, we make a case here for refiguring boredom at work as a more relational and political notion. Rather than being seen as negative or trivial, we suggest that it is central to the concerns of organisation studies (and more widely) as a ambivalent everyday condition and experience. In particular, boredom is intimately linked to the project and promises of modernity and its associated effects on time, from factory industrialisation to contemporary work platforms. Both in terms of philosophical argument and applied fields such as art, literature, architecture and design, we suggest that boredom is both emancipatory/productive and alienating. Such an understanding establishes opportunities for research which would be central to the experience of contemporary paid employment and wider experience.

This paper examines how national culture informs the sourcing of management knowledge through external consultancy. First, it hypothesises and compares the relationship between quantitative measures of Hofstede's cultural indices with adjusted expenditure on consulting in nine countries. Two cultural indices are found to correlate with consulting use – power distance (negatively) and individualism (positively). However, the disparity between our findings and prior research suggests limitations of generalisation in studies solely employing quantitative cultural indices to understand the purchasing of business knowledge. We therefore propose the use of supplementary, qualitative data with sensitivity to local contexts and briefly apply this by using secondary sources to provide historical narratives for two countries – the UK and Japan. Overall, we find and tentatively explain significant statistical relationships between Hofstede's cultural indices and adjusted expenditure on consultancy. We then draw attention to wider implications for consulting research and for practitioners involved in this context.

Public sector organisations often make use of management consultants in policy implementation, but we know little about the outcomes. The paper reports one of the first quantitative evaluations of the impact of consulting advice on efficiency of public sector organisations. We employ an extensive dataset covering English NHS acute care hospital trusts over a four-year period. Based on PCSEs estimations, the findings show a significantly positive relationship between consulting expenditure and organisational inefficiency. These results lend support to critical accounts of management consulting, highlighting the need for organisations to be circumspect in deciding whether and how to use these services. Watch a vodcast by one of the authors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw8S8D70DDg.

The growing use of external management consultancy services by public sector organizations has generated controversy. Some claim that users have become overreliant on, or even addicted to, this source of knowledge. However, our understanding of this phenomenon and the precise nature of its risks is underdeveloped. In this article, we address these concerns by focusing on whether using consulting services inflates future demand and on its consequences for efficiency. This is examined in the context of the English National Health Service and the adoption of New Public Management practices such as outsourcing and private finance initiative contracting. Based on an analysis of four years of data, the results suggest that using consulting services is associated with demand inflation and has negative implications for client organizational efficiency. These findings reveal a strong management consultancy effect, emphasizing the risks associated with demand inflation, with implications for both theory and policy.

From a review of secondary sources, this chapter briefly outlines the main critiques of the use of external commercial advice through consultancy—adverse effects on democracy, policy effectiveness and a plurality of expertise. It then argues that some use of external advice is nevertheless inevitable and may even have the potential to widen contributions to policy debate and decision making if it is effectively regulated or governed. Some of the ways in which governments or regulators have historically sought to control consulting use to date (e.g. through procurement) are then evaluated. Their limitations in curbing the power of large PSFs then leads to a discussion of some alternative options to de-marketize, internalize, diversify, monitor, and/or regulate forms of external consultancy use.

Organizational scholars increasingly view institutionalization as a process through which actors adapt or translate seemingly successful practices in a field to create variations that are specific to their own organization. Yet little is known about how outsiders who seek to diffuse ‘best practice’ affect translation. We examined interactions between management consultants and their clients in two different consulting projects, which focused on embedding the practice of ‘lean’ in one and the practice of a quality improvement framework in the other. Our findings provide insights into the processes of translation through which promoters and adopters iterate at different stages to reach a compromise, illuminating how the evolution of an imported practice signals the outcome of a negotiation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that management practices are not translated in isolation but enveloped by peripheral practices that are adopted by association. We highlight how the peripheral practice of benchmarking, in both cases, was rarely contested or negotiated and thus proved more resistant to translation. Our analysis allows us to unpack the agency inherent within translation-as-negotiation and integrate research on diffusion and translation.

Ideology is a core and contested concept in the social sciences, but also long deployed in management research to highlight the political, embedded and/or obscuring nature of ideas. Indeed, many would argue that management itself is inherently ideological in legitimating or privileging managerial interests and concealing other groups and ways of organising. In the first systematic review of how ideology has been conceptualized in management studies, this article explores its diverse and changing meanings in order to develop and sustain the concept. It is based on a heuristic review of 175 articles and 41 books published between 1956 and 2018. Further developing categories used in the social sciences around its role, we found views of ideology as: (1) domination; (2) legitimation; (3) interpretation; (4) integration and; (5) normative logic. In addition, emerging perspectives were identified where ideology was an (6) object of critique; and (7) fantasy structuring social reality. We describe, illustrate and evaluate these, often internally diverse and interrelated, perspectives as well as compare them with sometimes competing notions within the management field, such as discourse, culture and legitimation. We also bring together the different approaches and argue for a pluralist, but not infinitely flexible, approach to the concept. In doing so, we identify research agendas for ideology within management and organisation studies.

This article seeks to develop our understanding of how management concepts are translated by examining the role of identity work in this process. Rather than a sole focus on changes in a management concept, we examine tensions and congruences between agents’ orientations towards that concept and how they see the broader organizational engagement with it. Through an examination of qualitative data from a study of those specifically tasked with the implementation of Lean in hospital contexts, we identify their narratives of self in relation to the concept. We show how, through four different types of translation-as-identity-work – externalizing, professionalizing, rationalizing and proselytizing – both the concept and the agent are constructed simultaneously. In recognizing interconnectedness, diversity and dynamism in these actors’ involvement, we seek to integrate, contextualize and broaden existing perspectives on agency in translation research.

This research note introduces newly published research which sets out a basic framework for exploring and explaining national variations in the use of external management consulting. It is based on an extensive search of secondary sources on consulting and on differences in the use of management practices more generally. It concludes by setting up a research agenda and dialogue with practitioners to examine the use and non-use of external consulting empirically in different countries.

Recent claims assert that the transnational has displaced the national in importance vis-a-vis the governance of international professional organizations. Crucial to such claims are assumptions about rising geographical mobility and the emergence of cosmopolitan professionals who are increasingly detached from national professional regimes and contexts. We interrogate claims about the importance of transnational spaces through a cross-national study of global professional service firms in 12 countries. Our study demonstrates how the imperatives of client service, the locally rooted nature of social capital and cultural barriers all contrive to limit the ability and necessity of professionals to move across borders in their work and the pursuit of successful careers. The vitality of transnational firms appears to depend on professionals who are, for the most part, locally groomed – professionals with borders - who may only experience one short period of limited geographical mobility, usually early in their careers. Where transnational mobility is in evidence, it tends to take a more virtual than physical form. These results temper arguments about the rise and, certainly, extent of, physical mobility among elite employees of global professional service firms and, in turn, about the extent to which the transnational has supplanted the national as the most important frame of reference for professional organization. Rather, they support views that see the transnational and local as co-existing and interconnected.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify, describe and evaluate the different ways in which formal collective change agency is structured in specialist units inside 25 diverse organisations. As such it is oriented towards a range of practitioners operating in HR, project management or with responsibility for delivering change in public and private sectors. Design/methodology/approach Using a qualitative design, exploratory interview and case study research was conducted in organisations across the UK public and private sectors to explore how different change agency units operate within organisational structures. Findings Four dominant types of internal change agency unit are identified, varying in terms of their change impact scope and degree of structural embeddedness in the organisation. These units are described as transformers, enforcers, specialists and independents and share key concerns with securing client credibility and added value, effective relationship management and the use of consulting tools. Their roles and the tensions they experience are outlined along with hybrid forms and dynamic shifts from one type to another. Research limitations/implications The study could be extended outside of the UK and conducted longitudinally to help identify outcomes more precisely in relation to context. Practical implications Each of the four types of change agency unit identified is shown to be suited to certain conditions and to present particular challenges for collective change agency and for specialist management occupations engaged in such work. The analysis could usefully inform organisation design decisions around internal change agency. Originality/value The authors extend debates around the nature of internal change agency which has typically focussed on comparisons with external change agents at the level of the individual. Developing the work of Caldwell (2003), the authors reveal how emergent, team-based or collective approaches to change agency can be formalised, rather than informal, and that structural considerations of change need to be considered along with traditional concerns with change management.

Management ideas, and their associated applications, have become a prevalent feature of our working lives. While their focus is familiar, such as efficiency, motivation, and improvement, they range from specific notions such as activity-based costing, to broad movements like corporate social responsibility. This Handbook brings together some of the latest research from leading international scholars on how management ideas are produced, promoted, and adapted, and their effects on business and working practices and society at large.Rather than focusing on specific management ideas, this volume explores their key socio-political contexts and channels of dissemination, and is organized around four core overlapping themes. The first section sets out the research field in general, in terms of both an overall system and of different perspectives and research methods. The second section explores the role of different actors and channels of diffusion, including the consumers and producers of management ideas and 'new' media, as well as traditional players in the management ideas field such as consultancies and business schools. The third section focuses on specific features or dynamics of the management ideas system, such as their adoption, evolution, institutionalisation, and resurgence, while in the final section, critical and new perspectives on management ideas are examined, highlighting specific socio-political contexts and the possibility of alternative ideas and forms of critique.With a broad range of perspectives represented, this Handbook provides a comprehensive, authoritative, and enduring resource for those studying management, innovation, and organizational change, as well as for those working in the management ideas industry.

The formation of global public policy takes place in diverse fields populated by a range of different actors. One important, but neglected group of actors is large management consultancy firms. This chapter examines why and how such firms have been able to exercise influence over global public policy. Emphasis is placed on their reputational power, their organizational structures which enable them to use and develop expertise and the importance of their social networks amongst other elite actors. The chapter illustrates these themes through a case study of the REDD Initiative sponsored by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It concludes by outlining a research agenda which focuses on the power of consultancies in this arena, but also recognizes the limits to this power.

Across many sectors, new developments and discourses that emphasize change, collaboration, shifting professional boundaries and increased sharing of knowledge are taking place. One is thus challenged to question and/or develop further understanding of how and to what extent new ideas, scientific developments and technologies are translated within such contexts and thereby extend management and organization studies. To advance understanding about this significant field in the scholarly community, this special issue has assembled a diverse set of papers, which review developments in translation theory and seek to encourage new thinking and frameworks and open up new directions in management and organization studies more generally. By reflecting on these papers, the authors summarize key challenges in translational research and new framings, and point to exciting new research opportunities that can be found in fruitfully comparing, elaborating, expanding, contrasting and blending extant perspectives.

The management literature frequently assumes that management consultancy is the predominant source of external management knowledge for organisations. However, its use is invariably confined to a few Western, developed economies. Such variation is rarely acknowledged, let alone explained. In this conceptual article, we draw on diverse literatures to explore what drives national variations in consulting usage. To achieve this, we develop a basic framework of influencing factors and briefly apply it to the Japanese context. We conclude by explicating how our analysis has a wider application with respect to other knowledge sources in comparative studies.

In this article, we discuss how research on professions and organizations may benefit from a better understanding of the emergence and prevalence of 'new' management occupations or 'corporate professions' and their interactions with 'traditional' professions. To this end, we explore the theoretical and empirical implications of selected studies, analysing how professional and occupational jurisdictions, as well as inter-occupational relationships, are redefined. This occurs as new areas of management expertise emerge and gain influence in relation to broader organizational, technical and institutional developments.

This chapter explores an important, but much-neglected feature of management—its relationship with management consultancy. It firstly contrasts the dominant definitions of consulting as either inclusive or exclusive of management. Rather, management and consulting are shown to be both the same and different, especially in terms of a recent convergence towards both ‘consultancy as management’ and ‘management as consultancy’. The chapter looks at these developments in terms of the emergence of neo-bureaucratic organizations and a consultant manager role with an emphasis on change management, formal tools, project working, and facilitation. It then examines the relationship between management and consultancy in terms of their interactions in practice, through the idea of the activity and passivity of managerial clients of consultancy and the ideas they promote. Overall, the chapter seeks to broaden the analysis of management away from concerns within organizations towards that which spans organizational boundaries.

This paper examines the nature of the contemporary multinational corporation (MNC) through a study of the use of knowledge management systems (KMS) in four major international consulting firms. In particular, we explore whether and how such systems facilitate horizontal (inter-subsidiary) flows of knowledge, as described in the network view of the MNC. Our analysis reveals the presence of horizontal flows within the four firms, but flows that are contextually constrained and partly shaped by geopolitical power relations. Thus, our study gives some support to the image of the MNC as a network whilst highlighting the contextual limits of horizontal knowledge transfer and, importantly, the geopolitical conditions under which such knowledge transfer takes place. At the same time, it challenges the claim that consulting firms are model organizations in the area of knowledge management as well as the more negative view that questions the ability of KMS to facilitate knowledge transfer.

In this study, we develop the concept of ‘dirty’ and otherwise stigmatised work, by considering a psychological form of taint and identifying new ways in which taint is coped with. Traditionally, s...

Change agency is seen as a key route to reducing the occupational vulnerability of human resource management (HRM). However, few look outside of the HRM context to consider change agency more broadly in organisations. Drawing on a study of change agency units in British organisations, we argue that challenges to occupational credibility and competing jurisdictional claims have wider implications for the role of HR practitioners. In particular, change agency is better seen as replaying rather than resolving the ambiguity of HRM's role and identity in organisations.

In studies of the diffusion or translation of management ideas, power is frequently implied but is rarely theorised explicitly. Moreover, when it is recognised, the focus is often on only one form of power. This can obscure how different forms of power relate to each other, shape idea diffusion and connect to different forms of resistance. Using Lukes’ classic framing of power, we explore the activities of a key agent in the diffusion of ideas – management consultancy – and one of the leading players in that field – McKinsey & Co. We draw on diverse, publicly available forms of data on three different management ideas to identify how different forms of power and resistance enable and constrain the diffusion of management ideas. Our study emphasises both the dynamic relations between different forms of power over time and the importance of acknowledging the unintended consequences of power. At the same time, by focusing on power dynamics mostly operating outside of consulting projects, we add to our understanding of the role of consultancy in the diffusion of management ideas more generally.

Management innovation and the consultants who promote and support it are both typically associated with the ‘new’, with departures from the norm and from standard approaches. Indeed, standardization is often seen as an impediment to innovation, especially in the current ‘post-bureaucratic’ era. This article challenges such a view, arguing that consultant-led management innovation is often highly standardized. Based upon qualitative research into internal consultancy in large business organizations, both standardizing agendas and standardized methods are identified from a range of consultant-led management innovation programs. The analysis then points to some of the structural and cultural features of organizations that lead to managers favouring incremental, standardized approaches to change, even if these are often contested. In conclusion, the article points to the need to consider a range of different dimensions in the relationship between standardization and management innovation.

Much is claimed of management consultancy by critics and celebrants alike. Through shaping and legitimizing ideas and catalysing change, it has impacted on management practice and people's lives more generally. Given the growth of consultancy as an industry and wider activity, few have challenged these views. However, there are good reasons for treating them with some caution. In particular, its impact is exaggerated in geographical scope and confused with that of management ideas in general – consultancy as a scapegoat for management. At the same time, recent changes in both the nature and status of management and of consultancy have rendered traditional boundary distinctions less tenable such that the scope and impact of consultancy may be even greater than is typically assumed. Overall, its impact has been both understated and overstated. I therefore argue for a more cautious and critical approach. This recognizes consultancy as an integral part of management, where its distinctive role lies more in its structural position and ambiguous visibility and accountability than its practices, skills or occupational/professional identity claims. The research agenda thus becomes one of more clearly identifying the consequences of management as well as of consultancy, in part through a consideration of contexts where they are, or were, largely absent.

This article examines the active client of management consultancy as a key agent in managing and mediating knowledge flows across organizational 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 organizational boundaries.

The article explores the dimensions, dynamics and dilemmas associated with internal consultancy units (ICU) in various organizations in Great Britain with the goal of developing a better understand...

Drawing on a major historical study of the organization of Bletchley Park, the site of British and Allied codebreaking during the Second World War, this article shows that it was characterized by ‘chaos’ in terms of a lack of clear formal structures. It is argued that the success of Bletchley Park can be explained in terms of various factors including shared social capital of some employees, organizational hybridity, centralization, knowledge-sharing and organizational porosity. These factors may be understood to be the reasons why Bletchley Park was successful despite its organizational chaos, but the paper seeks to advance the stronger claim that it was successful because of its organizational chaos.

PurposeThe paper seeks to explore the nature and employee experience of an emergent approach to managing employees which emphasises “being yourself” through the expression of fun, individuality and difference.Design/methodology/approachThe paper utilises interviews and observations in a US‐owned call centre in Australia.FindingsThe management approach outlined is located within the emergence of market rationalism and associated claims of the limitations of normative control. With its emphasis on diversity and identity derived from non‐(paid) work contexts, it is presented as complementary to, but distinct from, the group conformity and organisational identity associated with conventional culture and “fun” management. The seemingly liberal regime is shown to be controlling in its limited scope and by exposing more of the employees' self to the corporation. This raises questions about the nature of workplace control, resistance and the meaning of authenticity at work.Originality/valueThe research provides an insight into an approach to management which has been largely neglected in research and proposes a modified concept of culture and “fun” management – neo‐normative control. It also serves to challenge the liberal claims made by proponents of the new approach and of “fun at work” more generally, that it is liberating for employees, a form of “existential empowerment”.

This article offers a historicized account of knowledge-intensive organizations. This is achieved by drawing on an archive and interview study of Bletchley Park, the British Second World War codebreaking centre.The outlines of the organization of Bletchley Park are presented. The case is then used to challenge the idea that knowledge-intensive organizations are a novel phenomenon. Second, it is used to explore the contingent nature of ascriptions of knowledge-intensivity to particular organizations and occupations

Research on management consultancy usually emphasizes the role and perspective of the consultants. Whilst important, consultants are only one element in a dynamic relationship involving both consultants and their clients. In much of the literature, the client is neglected, or is assumed to represent a distinct, immutable entity. In this paper, we argue that the client organisation is not uniform but is instead (like organisations generally) a more or less heterogeneous assemblage of actors, interests and inclinations involved in multiple and varied ways in consultancy projects. This paper draws upon three empirical cases and emphasizes three key aspects of clients in the context of consultancy projects: (a) client diversity, including, but not limited to diversity arising solely from (pre-)structured contact relations and interests; (b) processes of constructing ‘the client’ (including negotiation, conflict, and reconstruction) and the client identities which are thereby produced; and (c) the dynamics of client–consultant relations and how these influence the construction of multiple and perhaps contested client positions and identities.

This study defines an aspect of consultant knowledge that provides credibility without claiming unrealistic status for a field like consulting. Our focus is the "sector knowledge" that consultants accumulate which derives from repeated assignments in the industrial sector in which the client organization resides. This has been under-researched partly because of an emphasis oil knowledge as technique and method. But knowledge configured around the sector enables consultants to play the role of the outside expert and draw oil a language and experiences held in common with the client. The paper explores the role of consultants as sector intermediaries through a case study of contemporary management consulting in a UK local authority. We see "the sector" as air alternative type of knowledge formation salient for a client-centered occupation like consulting. We also explore sector knowledge as a negotiated setting and dispel overly simple notions of know-how being "brought to" the client. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It would be unfair to say that food has been completely ignored in the study of work and organizations. In perhaps one of the earliest studies on the topic, published in this very journal, Cook and Wyndham (1953) identified patterns of eating behaviour in a factory cafeteria exploring differences in what was eaten and the timing, location and social setting of eating. This appears to have been an isolated concern for it was not until 1985 that Michael Rosen’s engaging study – ‘Breakfast at Spiro’s’ (1985) – of the symbolism of organizational celebrations around meals appeared. Most recently, the business dinner has been examined, as a liminal space between work and private spheres (Sturdy et al., 2006). Indeed, this work and recognition of the neglect of food and drink in organization studies served as a catalyst for our special issue here, reinforced subsequently through a number of ‘editorial meetings’ over lunch, dinner and coffee. Of course, organizational studies have considered the food and drink industries such as Gabriel’s study of working lives in catering (1990) and various accounts of slow and fast food in the context of rationalization and customer service (Leidner, 1993; Ritzer, 1993). But such studies are not our direct concern here. They rarely extend beyond the employee’s hand serving the china plate or plastic cup. The recipient is assumed to be a customer not also a worker on a break or at a business dinner. While the customer’s role is recognized in helping to shape food work, little attention is given to how the food industry, such as commercial catering firms, restaurants, supermarkets or manufacturers, shape the working lives of others. Such concerns are more or less implicit in research where eating and drinking in and around work are recognized as important, but are not the principal focus. Here, attention is typically given to the informal organization such as Kanter’s

While the concept of enterprise identity has been extensively discussed, the active role of individuals in promoting enterprise is less understood. This article presents enterprising selves not simply as a self-disciplinary outcome of power, but as agential, whereby actors support regimes of enterprise, either actively or symbolically. In particular, it explores a neglected group—former management consultants working as change agents within organizations. This `consulting diaspora' is appointed on the basis of the prestige of their former occupation, as well as their enthusiasm for, and skills in, change management. They also embody enterprise through their `personal brand' in the labour market and an anti-bureaucratic, pro-change orientation. However, these characteristics, combined with the perishability of their status, limit the ability of these actors to embed enterprise. Rather, it is through the loss of their novel, enterprising appearance—'going native'—that change is reinforced. Thus, paradoxically, their enterprising nature runs counter to the adoption of techniques of enterprise. This has implications for our understanding of enterprise as organizational change, as well as the promotion of management ideas more generally.

Recent developments in organizational analysis have done much to fill out the dry, textbook image of rational, formal structures. Yet on one of the commonest kinds of organizational experience—friendship—organizational analysis has remained virtually silent. By contrast, within the wider social science literature some writers have recently accorded greater importance to friendship as a social phenomenon. This article suggests that organizational analysis would be well served by doing the same. To this end, the article explores what this might entail and identifies some of the issues that it could illuminate, both empirically and theoretically. In particular, it presents friendship as a folk concept, which recognizes the situational variability of its form, experience, and connectedness with other forms of relationship. In doing so, the article will help define and open up a focus for future research into friendship and organizational analysis.