Behind clients’ doors: What hinders client firms from “professionally” dealing with consultancy?

Abstract

Summary Prior research has located the issue of “professional” conduct with consultancy predominantly within the relationship between the manager and the consultant. However, recent studies provide indications that dealing professionally with consultancy may fail because of goal divergences between the individual managers and the organization. The first aim of this article is to re-examine this assumption theoretically, by drawing on agency theory, and empirically, by focusing on a single case study. Through this approach certain attitudes exhibited by managers are identified, which hinder dealing with consultancy in a professional manner across the entire organization. This observation motivates the second aim of the article: since the managers’ attitudes deviate from the company's goals in dealings with consultancy, the adequacy of governance measures needs to be analyzed. Several researchers have observed that companies primarily use control-based measures, like central procurement rules or policies, to govern managers dealing with consultancy. However, these measures are not readily accepted by managers. In view of the above, this study investigates alternative measures, which are summarized as incentive-based measures.