Management consulting is a fascinating field because it sits at the intersection of power, knowledge, and change. From its deep historical roots to its modern influence on governments, businesses, and society, consulting both shapes and reflects how decisions are made in complex organizations. It raises compelling questions about ethics, expertise, and impact, while also offering insight into how management ideas are created, spread, and challenged. Studying consulting, therefore, provides a unique lens on how modern organizations—and society itself—really work.
‘A Professor of Consulting eh? I didn’t know they existed!’
I probably get this response from someone once a fortnight and as far as I know, it is true – I was the first, and think I am the only Professor of Consulting in the world. It is also true that I didn’t expect to become one.
When I left corporate consulting twenty years ago to join academia, I expected to focus my research on digital technology(my old consulting specialism).
When I arrived, I quickly realized MBA students desperately needed consulting skills and knowledge, but research, books, and courses were scarce.
As I established my research and increasing number of my old colleagues bumped up against partner, started their own firms and came to me for advice on growing a consulting firm.
For ten years I have worked to strengthen evidence on this topic because I recognized that existing research was weak.
But aside from demand, what about supply? Why do I find consulting such a fascinating industry to study?
Many people assume ‘consulting’ originated in the nineteenth century, but societies have long provided management advice: prophets guided biblical kings, viziers advised Persian sultans, and consiglieres counseled the Mafia.
Yet, the dedicated business of management advice grew out of the increasing complexity of organizations after the Industrial Revolution.
Early consultancies focused on achieving efficiencies through ‘scientific management’ but later developed new services to meet an increasing array of client challenges, from leadership development and training through to IT strategy and environmental greenwashing.
Over the past century, organizations have increased consulting spending each year by roughly 8% after accounting for inflation.
Aside from its continued growth, four concerns have prompted recent media and academic attention to management consultancy.
1. The ethical implications of advice to powerful decision-makers. Consultancy, as an industry, faces several potential conflicts of interest that may cause firms to give clients inadequate advice
Conflicts arise when firms guard client secrets yet promise best-practice advice, mix audit and consultancy work, and hold disproportionate power over clients.
2. The growing influence of consultancy in new areas such as governments, local councils, education and non-profit organisations. The increasing and significant spend of public money on highly paid consultants does not always sit easy with tax-payers and other stakeholders, especially when the efficacy of that advice is questionable.
3. The involvement of management consultancy (with banks and the World Trade Organization), in imposing neoliberalism on developing countries.
Privatizations have led to higher utility prices, and labor market deregulations have lowered job security due to this involvement.
4. The question of whether consulting advice works. Consultants are often depicted as ‘witch-doctors’ or ‘snake-oil salesmen’ who sell clients overpriced and ineffective (repackaged) solutions.
Evidence shows that clients now purchase and use consultancy more skillfully, making it less credible to label them as ‘victims.
Ethical considerations aside, the consulting industry reflects and contributes to several wider sociological and management themes such as those below:
1. Consultancies are central in the development and dissemination of management ideas, and thus provide fertile ground for those interested.
2. Consultants themselves not only manifest an ambiguous and dynamic skill-set but are also increasingly the model for managers in non-consulting organizations such as charities, Universities and the public sector.
This makes the industry useful to those interested in the changing boundaries between consultants, clients and other stakeholders.
3. As a professional, knowledge-intensive, yet weak profession, management consultancy provides academics with a rich context to explore contested professional domains.
In short, I study and write about consulting because it fascinates me and also reflects society’s complexity and constant change.
