Seizing Opportunity in Emerging Fields: How Institutional Entrepreneurs Legitimated the Professional Form of Management Consulting

Abstract

W e draw on the early history of the management consulting field to build theory about how institutional entrepreneurs legitimate new kinds of organizations in emerging fields. We study the professional form of management consulting organization, which came to dominate other alternatives. Pioneers of this organizational form seized opportunities arising from broad institutional change to discredit the status quo and legitimate their model of how to advise organizations on strategic and operational issues. Similar to institutional entrepreneurs seeking to change mature fields, those in this emerging field engaged in theorization, undertook collective action, and established affiliations with recognized authorities and elites. But unlike institutional entrepreneurs in mature fields, the actors we studied could not leverage logics, positions, or collectivities within their emerging field; instead, they drew on logics from outside their field, sought affiliations with external authorities and elites, and emphasized the benefits of their activities for society at large. Our analysis thus suggests important differences in how actors legitimate novel organizational forms in emerging versus mature fields and underscores the need for theories of institutional entrepreneurship that explicitly account for field context.

Deconstructing the Outsider Puzzle: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty

“…In fact, so alien was Harrison to the rhetoric of scientific communication that he had to rely on James Short's support to make his arguments accessible (Bennett 2002 of the astronomy community of his time properly. Unlike previous accounts of entrepreneurs as skilled theorizers (e.g., Greenwood et al 2002, David et al 2013); Harrison did not succeed by manipulating the existing cultural structures. In fact, one cannot understand his ascendance into the arena of the longitude contestants without accounting for the mounting state of dissatisfaction caused by the failure of existing approaches to adequately measure longitude.…”

“…The Longitude act established precise technical performance parameters for adjudicating competing proposals providing contestants with means of proof that may not exist in other contexts. We speculate that in other kinds of settings, where outputs are more intangible and causal processes more complex, rhetorical skills play a greater role in the legitimation process due to the need to imbue solutions with deeper symbolic values that resonate with established categories (David et al 2013). …”

“…Originally archived at the Royal Greenwich Observatory (ref. Our goal is to use the historical material derived from these sources to illustrate and sharpen our conceptual framework and not to provide an empirical test of it (David et al 2013). In this sense, we employ the longitude case not merely as illustration, but as an inspiration for new understanding.…”

“…In so doing, we start with a theoretical agenda and we then move from theory to evidence in order to develop new insights. Our account is intended to sharpen, illustrate and ground our arguments, not to provide an empirical test (David, Sine, and Haveman 2013). In particular, our analysis exposes key contextual circumstances that affect the opportunities facing outsiders and the constraints to their efforts.…”

Power and the diffusion of management ideas: The case of McKinsey & Co

“…For example, we saw how it initially joined forces with other elite firms to exclude and discredit the 'high volume, low-cost' approach to consulting (Higdon, 1969). However, having secured its own dominance and that of the professional form of consulting, McKinsey has avoided engagement with professional associations who might offer a competing source of power over 'best practice' (David et al, 2013). This withdrawal of support in favour of corporate professionalism has a serious effect on the legitimacy and power of such institutions, for example, undermining attempts at compulsory professional accreditation for consultants (Muzio et al, 2011).…”