Consultancy's Consequences? A Critical Assessment of Management Consultancy's Impact on Management
| Author | Andrew Sturdy |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00750.x |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
Consultancy’s Consequences? A Critical
Assessment of Management Consultancy’s
Impact on Management
Andrew Sturdy
Department of Management, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK
Email: andrew.sturdy@bristol.ac.uk
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.
Introduction
For the last 20 years or so, management con-
sultancy has been a source of some fascination
for managers, business journalists and academics.
Its apparently spectacular growth and presence in
and around the elites of business and government
and beyond have prompted grand claims of its
impact and provoked both criticisms and de-
fences of its practice. These tend to be based
upon the management ideas and organizational
reforms associated with consultancy interven-
tions – their quality and impact – as well as the
position of consultancy as ‘independent’ or
‘unaccountable’. For example, at a broad level,
consultants are seen as key agents and symbols of
contemporary social change. In Thrift’s account
of ‘soft’ or ‘knowing’ capitalism, management
consultancy is a key ‘generator and distributor of
new knowledge . . . a vital part of the cultural
circuit of capital’ – consultants as ‘capitalism’s
commissars’ (2005, pp. 35–36, 93; also Sennett,
2006). Similarly, in government contexts, what
has been termed ‘consultocracy’ has emerged.
Here, ‘consultants have become powerful because
. . . the new managerialist model that they
advocate tends to remove public administration
from politics and thus from public scrutiny’
(Saint-Martin, 2004, p. 20). More generally,
Fincham and Clark note how ‘few people,
whether in their roles as employees or as citizens,
This paper is partly based upon projects funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the
UK, whose support is gratefully acknowledged (RES
000-22-1980 and 334-25-0004). In addition, ideas and
comments from Robin Fincham, Chris Wright and Joe
O’Mahoney have been very helpful.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 22, 517–530 (2011)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00750.x
r2011 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management r2011 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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