Abstract
This paper offers a longitudinal analysis of the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC). Drawing on archive sources, we consider the manner in which the IMC sought to institutionalize a form of expertise specific to management consultants. Rejecting attempts to locate the boundaries of such expertise within idealized, archetypal frameworks, we analyse the IMC’s attempts to secure occupational closure in the field of consulting by means of normative, cognitive and symbolic mechanisms. While others account for the Institute’s professional project as a failure consequent upon consulting’s fragmentary knowledge base, we suggest that this project did not so much fail as drift towards another ‘hybrid’ form. In an attempt (a) to account for this shift and (b) to outline its key contours, we offer an archival analysis that explores the manner in which the Institute sought to reconcile the multiple interests and competing logics that construct professionalism within the field of consulting.
Highlights
This paper offers a longitudinal analysis of the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC)
While accepting that the IMC did engage in activities designed to secure the trappings of professional working, we will argue that it makes little sense to ask the essential(ist) question: Are consultants really professionals? Instead, we invite the more fundamental and, we hope, more fruitful line of inquiry: What did the IMC do to those whom it sought to represent? Why did it do this and what outcome(s) did it produce? Noting the formal dissolution of the IMC in 2005, we address these questions as we offer reflections on the rise and fall of the Institute of Management Consultants
Concluding discussion This paper has offered a longitudinal analysis of the professional project instituted by the IMC
Summary
This paper offers a longitudinal analysis of the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC). We believe that attempts to gauge the professionalization – or even the ‘quasi-professionalization’ (McKenna, 2006; 2007) – of management consultancy are unhelpful because they indulge forms of analysis which assume that key occupations may be located at points on a common evolutionary path towards ‘real’ professionalism (Wilensky, 1964). We draw on the concept of ‘hybrid professionalism’. This allows us to circumvent the simplistic dualism between ‘collegial’ professionalism and ‘corporate’ professionalism in order to focus on the different – sometimes conflicting – logics employed by an occupational group in order to pursue a professional project. Hybrid professionalism permits us to recognize the role played by the external environment in shaping the nature and purpose of professionalism within an institutional context (Hodgson, Paton and Muzio, 2015)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
