Abstract
In a historical retrospective, although the existing literature calls the management consulting industry an extraordinary sector and a unique phenomenon in the business context, in fact these statements are not accompanied by a number of academic studies that emphasize the importance of the effective management consultant’s work. To battle the lack of studies in this emerging area, this article aims to understand the most important factors from the perspective of consultants and managers to build successful relationships in management consulting projects. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were conducted to management consultants and SME managers. Our findings suggests competence and experience of consultants, their ability to understand clients, their professionalism and credibility, the transparency of the processes, values and goals they can put in the performance of their work are the five key factors for building successful relationships.
Highlights
Management consultancy can be defined as “the process by which an individual or a firm assists a client to achieve a stated outcome” (Biech, 2019, p. 3)
In Portugal, most of the consulting firms mentioned that they account for the effects of relationships regarding benefits and costs from their management (Figure 3), and that this is done in their companies (Figure 4), allows to understand that the measurement values relationships in terms of proximity strategies with clients and not of concerning accounting, as mentioned by some interviewees – Content analysis (Table 1) it is possible to perform this type of accounting through comparisons between those who encourage relationships and those who do not, comparing induced actions that allow us to perceive the billing differential, the correlation between customer satisfaction and revenue, correlation between business growth, relationship quality and different relational patterns measurement
Through the obtained responses it was possible to comprise that consultants’ competence and experience, their ability to understand clients, their professionalism and credibility, and processes, values and objectives’ transparency that they can put in the performance of their job, are the five key factors for building successful relationships
Summary
Management consultancy can be defined as “the process by which an individual or a firm assists a client to achieve a stated outcome” (Biech, 2019, p. 3). In the same line of other fields of the management territory, the evolution of the strategic subjects in organizations has broadly been diffused by the management consulting industry, this being the main reason why Canback (1998) describes this sector successful way which must be embraced by companies in the contextualization of their strategic orientation and their professionals as being the true disseminators of the complex phenomenon of business evolution known until today These opinions have been supported by several authors over the past few years, defending the industry as an influential and powerful tool for organizational change, bringing a new life to organizations and their procedural chains. Wittington (2007) gives an example, noting that no article on consulting in one of the major journals of the strategy such as the “Strategy Management Journal” had been published by 2007
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