Use Of Management Consultants Research Articles

McKinsey auf der Hardthöhe: Unternehmensberater im Bundesministerium der Verteidigung 1981/82

Abstract This paper examines the use of management consultants in the German Ministry of Defence in 1981 and 1982. After an affair concerning the procurement of the Tornado fighter aircraft, the Minister of Defence, Hans Apel, hired a team from the consulting firm McKinsey to develop a new organisational concept. This paper examines the special features of the German procurement and defence administration as well as the reasons for the failure of projects of administrative innovation. Focus is placed on the role of management consultants in the implementation of organisational innovations and their relationship to the actors within the ministerial administration.

Performative seduction: how management consultants influence practices of leadership

PurposeThis paper tracks how a policy recommended by management consultants becomes embedded as an integral part of leadership practice. It explores the launch of the concept of “talent management” by McKinsey & Company and how it becomes adopted as part of expected leadership practices in the English National Health Service. The use of Management Consultants globally has increased exponentially, and the paper considers this phenomenon and the ways in which management consultant advice influences public sector leadership and practice at local level.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach is adopted, focussing on the introduction of the concept of talent management into the English NHS, following the wider emergence of the concept through influential reports published by McKinsey & Company in the late 1990s. An analysis of the emergence of the concept is conducted drawing on this series of reports and the adoption of talent management policies and practices by the English government's Department of Health.FindingsThese influential reports by the management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company, constituted an urgent need for this newly identified concept of talent management and the secrecy surrounding its reception. It is this mystery surrounding the decisions about a talent management strategy in the NHS and the concealment of decisions behind closed doors, which leads us to offer a theory of management consultants' influence on leaders as one of performative seduction.Originality/valueManagement consultancy is a vast business whose influence reaches deeply into public and private sector organisations around the world. Understanding of the variegated policies and practices that constitute contemporary modes of governance therefore requires comprehension of management consultants' role within those policies and practices. This paper argues that management consultants influence public sector leadership through insertion of their products into definitions of, and performative constitution of, local level leadership.

McKinsey and the 'Tripartite Monster': The Role of Management Consultants in the 1974 NHS Reorganisation.

The first major reorganisation of the National Health Service took place in 1974, twenty-six years after the service had been established. It has long been perceived as a failure. This article draws on archival records and a witness seminar held in November 2016 to provide a more nuanced assessment of the 1974 reorganisation and understand more fully why it took the form that it did. In particular it identifies the reorganisation as an important moment in the ongoing story of management consultants engaging with health policymakers, and explores the role of McKinsey and Co. in detail for the first time. Key explanatory factors for their involvement are identified, including the perceived lack of expertise and manpower inside the civil service and the NHS, and perceptions of their impact and effectiveness are discussed. Many debates about the use of management consultants today were directly foreshadowed during the early 1970s. Alongside this, the role of other groups of policy actors, including civil servants, politicians and medical professionals, are established and the extent to which British health policymakers have had to work within existing cultural, political, legislative and practical constraints when trying to initiate change is demonstrated. The fact that many of the 'mistakes' that were made have been repeated in the course of subsequent reforms, speaks to the poor institutional memory of Whitehall, and the Department of Health and Social Care in particular. In the run up to 1974 management consultants could make only a limited contribution to an imperfect compromise.

The impact of management consultants on public service efficiency

Public sector organisations often make use of management consultants in policy implementation, but we know little about the outcomes. The paper reports one of the first quantitative evaluations of the impact of consulting advice on efficiency of public sector organisations. We employ an extensive dataset covering English NHS acute care hospital trusts over a four-year period. Based on PCSEs estimations, the findings show a significantly positive relationship between consulting expenditure and organisational inefficiency. These results lend support to critical accounts of management consulting, highlighting the need for organisations to be circumspect in deciding whether and how to use these services.

Government Agencies' Hiring of Management Consulting Services in Sweden - An Explorative Study

The current paper investigates the use of management consultants in the Swedish public sector. Based on an analysis of the use of management consulting services in 55 Government agencies (GAs) in the years 2004-2011 the paper makes a number of contributions. First it confirms an overall growth of the use of consulting services in the public sector. However, it also shows that the use of consulting services and its growth are unevenly distributed across organizations, where GAs with a highly professionalized work force are less heavy users of consulting services than regular GAs. The study also points at temporal variations in GAs use of consulting services. Here changes in top management, especially the CEO, are identified as initiators of temporary reductions of the use of consulting services.

Management consultants and the United States’ public sector

Management consultants provide strategic advice to public sector agencies and departments throughout the US, contributing to what some scholars call the “hollowing out of the state.” What ideational frameworks underlie these public -private relationships? Findings from a survey of management consultant show that they believe that they are contracted because they provide knowledge that is unavailable inside the public sector and that their ideas are more innovative. This study helps to explain management consultants’ perceptions of their services contracted by US public sector. By gauging the perspectives of management consultants, this research will potentially help academics and practitioners to better understand public agencies’ contracting of management consultants. This article provides preliminary steps towards better understanding and analyzing the use of management consultants by different levels of the US public sector.

The Influence of National Culture on the Use of Management Consultants

The current paper aims at explaining variations in the “make-or-buy” decision when it comes to management consultants across national contexts. Within Europe, spendings on consultants vary from 0,1% of GDP in e.g. Poland to 1,2% of GDP in the UK. The current paper presents a model based on transaction costs economics identifying differences in the cultural dimensions Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity as central explanatory factors. The model is tested on data on the volume of management consulting services as % of GDP in 22 European countries. The results indicate that a country’s preference for Uncertainty Avoidance is negatively related to the use of management consultants. This is explained in relation to the higher perceived uncertainties and thus transaction costs in high Uncertainty Avoidance cultures. We also find that the cultural dimension Masculinity-Femininity moderates the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and the use of consultants such that the negative effect of uncertainty avo...

Constructing the legitimate buyer of management consulting services

PurposeHiring management consultants as external support in organizational change is in the literature described as a socially and emotionally stressful activity for managers. Management consultants need to deal with these threatening aspects of their service. This paper aims to explore the subject positions management consultants offer managers in their self‐presentations on the World Wide Web.Design/methodology/approachThe paper studies the self‐presentations on the www of four large management consultancies–Accenture, BCG, KPMG, and McKinsey & Co. Using a Foucault inspired discourse analytical framework, we analyze the subject positions offered to client‐managers in these self‐presentations and how these subject positions relate to the management regimes of bureaucracy and post‐bureaucracy.FindingsThe study identifies two different discursive practices–one normalizing practice, constructing the use of management consultants as a natural aspect of management and a second practice rationalizing the use of management consultants, providing arguments aimed at reducing the pressures on the manager. The normalizing discourse which draws on a post‐bureaucratic regime was found in Accenture and KPMG. The rationalizing discourse was found in McKinsey and BCG and draws on the bureaucratic regime.Originality/valueThis work highlights how consultants deal with the pressures their presence puts on managers. It illustrates how managerial truth regimes contribute to shaping the conditions for management consulting and the consultant‐client relationship.

From Babes and Sucklings:: Management Consultants and Novice Clients

Although now awaiting a return to the heady years of the late 1990s, the modern management consultancy industry is still vast. So, too, is the number of managers experienced in the use of management consultants. But the expansion of management consultancy has also attracted new customers among managers who are yet to be blooded in the use of consultants. Conventional wisdom would have it that these novices are easy prey for the crafty consultant, that they will be less able than the old hands to stand up for themselves. This paper tests the proposition in a range of circumstances: it looks at the use of management consultants in the Church of England, in a couple of trade unions, and in Poland. The paper finds that these novice users are not quite as helpless as might have been anticipated, and that experienced clients of consultants, and even consultants themselves, may have something to learn from them. The paper explains the situation in terms of the close relationship that usually develops between management consultant and hiring manager. In the absence of this relationship, consultant and manager struggle to come to terms, but there are benefits for the hiring organisation.

Quantitative Methods in the Real World: A Consultant's View of Practice

As data become more readily available, it is agreed that the applications of quantitative methods will become increasingly important. However, the speed of this take-up is unclear at present; it is sufficient to say that it will be slow if current practices are not changed. Consequently, it is timely to discuss some of the practical issues. Among the issues addressed in this paper are software requirements, staffing implications, data availability, and the use of management consultants.

Strategy consulting—A shooting star?

The use of management consultants to assist the process of strategy development has been the topic of much interest in recent years. In particular, the strategy consulting firms have received much attention through their development of, and association with, strategic frameworks and concepts. Despite this, relatively little is known about the management consulting industry and even less about the practices of those consultants operating at the strategic levels in organizations. This paper provides an analysis of the strategy consulting industry in the United Kingdom. It surveys the management consultants involved in strategy consulting and identifies their size and the extent of their activities in such work. It reviews the type of strategy assignments currently being undertaken and discusses some CEO's assessment of the consultant's work. Guidelines are provided for managers considering the use of management consultants for strategy work.

The Future — With Consultants

The use of management consultants is an accepted fact in management practice — in all management functions and in all sectors of the economy. Indeed, a great deal of money is spent in the UK on management consultancy each year. Wood estimates that, in 1982, around £170 million was spent on management consultancy. Assignments carried out within the area of personnel management alone accounted for some 15–20 per cent of this total. Yet, the presence of management consultants within organisations is often overlooked. There is scant mention of consultants in the huge array of prescriptive and descriptive literature on management. (One exception within the realms of personnel management is Purcell.) This absence is both interesting and curious. It is curious because so many organisations — both public and private, large and small — use consultants in some form or another. The use of consultants ought, therefore, to be an accepted fact of life in the management of organisations and by those writing about management.

BENEFITS FROM THE USE OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS*

Australian Veterinary JournalVolume 52, Issue 10 p. 482-482 Free Access BENEFITS FROM THE USE OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS* First published: October 1976 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-0813.1976.tb05406.x † *Prepared by PMAS upon request by the Standing Committee on Administration. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume52, Issue10October 1976Pages 482-482 RelatedInformation

TickIT And Consultants: How To Get ITWithout Them

The purpose of this paper is to show how a small, independent company's quality management system was successfully certificated to TicklT/ISO 9001, without the use of external management consultants. The TickIT certificate in question covers the entire business scope, including software development and maintenance (both of products and bespoke systems), large research and development contracts, consultancy and IT training. Not only was TickIT implemented successfully: the scheme lived up to its promise and continues to deliver measurable business benefits to the company. The main benefits include shortened lead times, higher productivity and business turnover, and increased market share. At the same time, human resources spent in QA have reduced since certification, and currently stand at around six per cent. However, despite avoiding the use of management consultants, it has become apparent in the four years since QA implementation began that a significant amount of heavy going could have been avoided if the organisation had taken advice at key stages. This paper identifies those stages and concludes that judicious and independent advice would have saved time and money.