8/19/2010

WORK 6111 Management Consulting

Week 4:

‘Professionalism’ and the

Critique of Management
Consulting

FACULTY OF
ECONOMICS & BUSINESS

Professor Christopher Wright

WORK6111 Management Consulting

Consulting and ‘Professionalism’

› David Maister (2005) –

professionalism essential to long-
‘professionalism’
term consultancy success
› ‘Professionalism is not a title you
claim for yourself; it’s an adjective you
hope other people will apply to you.
You have to earn it.’
› Attitudes and behaviour based on
integrity

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Consulting and ‘Professionalism’

› We always put the clients’ interests first, ahead of
our own;
› If a client wants to pay y us to do thingsg that we
thi k aren’t’t iin hi
think his or h
her b
bestt iinterests,
t t we’ll
’ll tturn
the work down;
› If we have even the smallest doubt that we can’t
do this work to excellence, we’ll turn the work
away;
› We never lie, misrepresent, or exaggerate, in any
way, to anyone, under any circumstances;
› We stand by our work
work. If clients don
don’tt like our
work, we refuse to take their money;
› If a client treats our people badly, or with a lack of
respect, we’ll walk away from the client;
› We will fire any employee who fails to treat others
with respect and dignity

Limits to Consulting ‘Professionalism’?

› Promote a culture of arrogance and

elitism (recruit the ‘best and brightest’);
› Focus on their role as experts rather
than advisors;
› Vision of the consultant as the
outsider;
› Making g themselves remote from
clients, their firms and products
› Chasing short-term profit

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Consulting Satire I

› Satire as critique of the

consulting phenomenon
› History of consultants as a
source of humour
› What are the themes at the
heart of this critique?
- Consultants as ‘con
con-men
men’
- Consultants as arrogant
- Consultants as harmful
- Consultants as parasites

Consulting Satire II

Adams, S. (1996) The Dilbert Principle, New York: Harper Collins, p.154

‘Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to be

regular employees at your company.
Consultants eventually leave
leave, which makes them excellent scapegoats for
major management blunders.
Consultants will return your calls, because it’s all billable time to them.
Consultants work preposterously long hours, thus making regular staff feel
like worthless toads for working only sixty hours a week.’

http://www.vidlit.com/house/

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Consulting Satire III

› Current and former consultants as satirists:

Consulting Satire IV

'CHARLIE SUNSHINE: As a successful partner/manager

you’ve got to win over key members of the client team. This
requires
i an iinteresting
t ti mixi off iintelligence,
t lli charisma
h i and
d
confidence. In the ideal scenario, the client thinks the
consultant is his smart friend, who’s got a much faster and
firmer grip on the situation than he has. So impress the
client occasionally with a few bits of mental gymnastics,
imaginative solutions to problems etc. At the same time the
client shouldn’t think the consultant arrogant. So every now
and then you should let the client bore on proudly about his
most recent golf trip, without letting slip that you haven’t a
clue what he’s
he s talking about
about.

AURELIUS GLASNIP: The client has to think, really sharp

guy, knows his stuff but he’s still a decent bloke.'

UNDER ICE - radio play by Falk Richter (2007),

http://falkrichter.com/logic/article.php?cat=22&id=320

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The Business Press Critique

› Criticism of MCing within the business
press (eg. Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1998;
O’Shea
O Shea & Madigan
Madigan, 1997)
› Do consultants actually provide value and
help business organisations? Suggest often
they do not and can in fact be harmful
› Emphasis upon consultants and their
unseen and
d unaccountable
t bl iinfluence
fl upon
managers (e.g. consultants as
‘cosmocrats’)

Consultants as Critics
› Former consultants as critics, e.g. Shapiro
(1996).
› Consultants as opportunists who sell
dubious packages to a gullible clientele
› Managers should diagnose their own
problems and keep a tight-rein on what
consultants are allowed to do
› Scandalous view provided by Pinault
(2000), autobiographic account of
consultants as often unethical and harmful
in their relations with clients

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Summary of the Critique of

Consultancy (i)
Knowledge / Expertise
› Ambiguous / unfalsifiable techniques and results, consultants as
charlatans
› Standardised models, ‘cookie cutter’ consulting
› Lack industry knowledge/expertise

Techniques / Process
› ‘Rainmakers’
Rainmakers sell but juniors sent to do the work
› Advise but don’t implement
› Learn from clients and sell client expertise

Summary of the Critique of

Consultancy (ii)
Consultant-Client Relationship
› Clients become dependent on consultants
› Desire for long-term client relationships masks desire to ‘on-sell’ and
maximise billings
› Don’t listen to the client (‘do it to the client’)
› Arrogant and insensitive to employees

Outcomes / Results
› Lack of accountabilityy
› Cost / value for money?
› Harmful to client organisation
› ‘old wine in new bottles’
› ‘Fad surfers’

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The Academic Critique I

› Consultants as sellers of management fads and fashions

(eg. Abrahamson, Gill & Whittle, Huczynski)
› Not the effectiveness or efficiency of consultant
interventions but related to client uncertainty and anxiety
› Focus on the discursive techniques consultants use to sell
their services:
'Figures like gurus and consultants are outsiders as far as corporate power
structures are concerned; also their expertise does not have the accepted
status of the sciences and professions. So how can their presumed influence
and the spectacular growth in the industry be explained? The answer, many
critical studies suggest, lies in the view of management consultancy itself as a
form of ‘persuasion’.'

Clark, T. & R. Fincham, (eds.), (2002), Critical Consulting: New Perspectives on the
Management Advice Industry, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.8-9.

The Academic Critique II

› A more structural and complex perspective
is provided by writers such as Sturdy (1997)
and Fincham (1999)
( )

› Sturdy (1997) - danger in seeing consultants

as 'clever' and clients as 'gullible'

› The consultant-client relationship a

dialectical relationship, in which both
consultant and client experience uncertaintyy

› Fincham highlights the contingent nature of

power relations in consultant-client relations

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Towards a Complex Vision of

Consultancy

› Consultancy as an activity and occupation is

complex and nuanced (diversity and variability)
› Consultants can also experience issues of
legitimacy, vulnerability and efficiency
› Both positive and negative depictions highlight
aspects of consultancy, rather than the whole
story
› Consultants can exhibit multiple personas -
‘professionals’, ‘prophets’, ‘partners’, ‘service
workers’ and ‘hard-headed business people’

Conclusion
› Wide-ranging critique of consulting including satire; the
mainstream business press; former consultants,
consultants and
academics
› Sceptical and often negative depiction of consultants:
- ‘Do consultants provide benefits for clients or society more
generally?’
- ‘If not,, how do consultants convince clients to use their services?’

› What are we to make of the positive and negative

depictions of management consultancy (consultancy
as a morality play – saviours and ‘folk-devils’)?