Management Consulting: Towards an Integrative Framework of Knowledge, Identity, and Power

Abstract

This paper reviews the past 28 years of scholarship on management consulting to synthesize the field and establish more broadly its contribution to management research. Through a systematic review of 219 articles, we identify three core conceptual themesknowledge, identity, and power -that have dominated the literature to date. Through a thematic inductive analysis of a subsection of articles, we then investigate how these themes have been defined, used, and linked. This allows us to uncover and problematize the relationships between these themes. In making explicit underlying theoretical assumptions and relationships between knowledge, identity, and power, we induce a unique framework that can guide and support future studies, instigate metaparadigmatic dialogue, and thus help consolidate the field.

Professional Fluidity: Reconceptualising the Professional Status of Self-Employed Neo-professionals

“…Yet this primacy and the need, at times, to do scut work creates the conditions for client capture and dependency, whereby individual autonomy is ceded to powerful clients, (Gustafsson, Swart, & Kinnie, 2017;Leicht & Fennell, 2001;Nikolova & Devinney, 2012). In consultancy it has important implications for professional identity, and impacts on the interface between knowledge and power (Mosonyi et al, 2020) as the client now dominates. Furthermore, ethics, and an interest in public good, can be definitional aspects of a professional (Freidson, 1984;Leicht & Fennell, 1997, 2001) but client capture challenges this.…”

“…Yet importantly for Maestripieri (2019) and Kitay and Wright (2007), the heterogeneity in work settings has more of a role to play in how professionalism is enacted than the knowledge base or barriers to entry as seen elsewhere. This is important given the organisational turn in professions as a whole, but also the underpinning assumption in consultancy of organisational employment (see Mosonyi et al, 2020).…”

As contribuições das consultorias em gestão (CGs) para inovação aberta (IA) em micro e pequenas empresas (MPEs)

“…Ao discutirmos as contribuições das Consultorias em Gestão (CGs) para a Inovação Aberta (IA) em Micro e Pequenas Empresas (MPEs), foi identificado o potencial existente na exploração do aparato conceitual e analítico em torno desta relação em diferentes perspectivas, sendo elas: o direcionamento pelas áreas de atividade (Kubr, 2002), os tipos específicos de conhecimento relacionados a CG (Kipping & Clark, 2012;Cerruti et al, 2019;Powell e Ambrosini, 2017;Mosonyi et al, 2019;Wright et al, 2012;Werr & Stjernberg, 2003;Haas & Hansen, 2005;Adams & Flynn , 2005;Sturdy & Mahoney, 2018), o papel das CGs (Canato & Giangreco, 2011), os tipos de agentes envolvidos, como por exemplo as ECGs (Kipping & Clark, 2012), os diferentes níveis de análise, tais como a indústria, empresa e projetos (Engwall & Kipping, 2013), e diferentes contextos (Cerruti et al, 2019), condicionadas a experiência do consultor, a intensidade da colaboração e a visão comum (Bronnenmayer et al, 2016b;Bronnenmayer et al, 2016a). Ainda, é possivel sugerir que as MPEs podem se engajar na co-produção simultânea de problemas e soluções em uma CG (Sturdy, 2018) por meio da adoção de estratégias de IA acoplada (Gassmann, 2006;Enkel, Gassmann & Chesbrough, 2009;Dąbrowska, Fiegenbaum & Kutvonen, 2013;West & Bogers, 2014) além da usual estratégia de fora para dentro em que os conhecimentos são integrados em todo o processo de inovação (Chesbrough, 2003).…”

“…Em um estudo empírico de cinco Empresas de CG globais, foiindetificado que critérios diferentes são adotados por suas lideranças e pelos consultores para escolherem entre diferentes sistemas de compartilhamento de conhecimento(Powell e Ambrosini, 2017). Por meio da análise minuciosa de 113 artigos de consultoriaMosonyi et al (2019), identificaram e mobilizaram três temas conceituais principais: ), identidade (individual e organizacional) e poder (individual, palavras e gestão), além de induzirem uma estrutura de 'influência-recurso-controle' (IRC) que especifica as interfaces desses temas para problematizar a literatura.…”

The performative practices of consultants in a change network: an actor–network practice perspective on organisational change

“…The role of consultants in the implementation of large-scale programmatic change is often framed in terms of models of expertise, competence and transferable knowledge (Heusinkveld and Visscher 2012;Levina and Orlikowski, 2009;Sturdy et al, 2009;Mosonyi, et al, 2020). The prevailing assumption is that knowledge of the change process is already standardised, codified and commercially proven and that implementation can be managed within fixed project timelines (Canato et al, 2013).…”