09 Critical Themes in Consultancy

Type
Dr.
Joe
author
O’Mahoney
names and
hereCalvert Markham
O’Mahoney and Markham:
Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Chapter 9: Critical Themes
in Consulting
© Oxford University Press, 2013. All rights reserved.
Chapter Objectives
By the end of this lecture, you will be able to:
•
Explain the history and importance of critical thinking.
•
Outline the role of consultants in developing the knowledge economy.
•
Assess if consultants can be described as innovators.
•
Explain the professionalisation of the consulting industry.
•
Outline the relationship between consultancy and the risks inherent in modern
capitalism.
•
Describe the approaches academics have taken to explain consulting
identities.
•
Examine consultancy as a contributor to the spread of capitalism.
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
9.1 Thinking Critically
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Introduction: Thinking Critically
• What being critical means.
• What being critical is important
• Unitarism vs. the sociological perspective
• Critical management studies
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
9.2 Knowledge & Innovation
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Knowledge and innovation
• The growth of information
• The specialisation of work
• Consultancies as innovators
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The market
Fads & fashions
Networks
Evolving knowledge?
Not so innovative after all?
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Consultants as knowledge managers
• Applying knowledge
• Commodifying knowledge
• Legitimising knowledge
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
9.3 Professions
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Professions
• What is a profession?
• Why are professions interesting?
• Is consultancy a profession?
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Should consultants professionalise?
• Reducing ethical problems?
• Helping clients?
• Helping consultants?
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
9.3 Trust, Risk and Ambiguity
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Trust, risk and ambiguity
• Conditions of modernity
• Sources of uncertainty
• Dealing with ambiguity
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Legitimating institutions
Trust
Distrust
Living in liminality
Charisma and the leap of faith
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
9.4 Consulting identities
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Consulting identities
• From rationality to postmodernism
• Consulting identities
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Consulting as the elite
Consultants as scientists
Consultants as magicians
Too many identities?
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
9.5 Culture, Colonisation and
Capitalism
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Colonisation and capitalism
• The neo-liberal agenda
• Missionaries for capitalism?
• Aiding and abetting New Public Management
• Cultural Relativism
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Summary
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Summary
This chapter has shown that consultants:
• Epitomise the rise of ‘knowledge workers’.
• Contribute to the creation and diffusion of management innovations.
• Find, apply, commodify and legitimate knowledge.
• Exhibit some characteristics of becoming a profession.
• Incorporate considerable ambiguities but there are also mechanisms for
dealing with these.
• Have identities that are complex, fragmented and contested.
• Have been integral to the diffusion of neo-liberal capitalism.
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition