Knowledge production in consulting teams

The central thesis of this paper is that the production of knowledge in consulting teams can neither be understood as the result of an internal interaction between clients and consultants decoupled from the wider socio-political environment nor as externally determined by socially constructed industry recipes or management fashions detached from the cognitive uniqueness of the client-consultant team. Instead, we argue that knowledge production in consulting teams is intrinsically linked to the institutional environment that not only provides resources such as funding, manpower, or legitimacy but also offers cognitive feedback through which knowledge production is influenced. By applying the theory of self-organization to the knowledge production in consulting teams, we explain how consulting teams are structured by the socio-cultural environment and are structuring this environment to continue their work. The consulting team's knowledge is shaped and influenced by cognitive feedback loops that involve external collective actors such as the client organization, practice groups of consulting firms, the academic/professional community, and the general public who essentially become co-producers of consulting knowledge. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd

Client-consultant interaction: Capturing social practices of professional service production

Based on the investigation of seven consultancy projects within an international technical consulting firm, we identify three major practices that characterize client-consultant interaction - shaping impressions, problem-solving, and negotiating expectations - and discuss their respective characteristics, activities, and contingencies. Our discussion of these practices provides not only a more differentiated picture of client-consultant interaction but also uncovers the critical role that clients play in these practices. Crown Copyright © 2009

Trusting as a 'Leap of Faith': Trust-building practices in client-consultant relationships

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. Successful client-consultant relationships depend on trust, but trusting is difficult in the non-routine, high-stake context of consulting. Based on a sample of 15 clients and 16 consultants in Australia, we develop a grounded model that explains the process of trust granting in the context of client-consultant relationships. Our model builds upon two influential research streams on trust in the literature, the ABI model (Mayer et al., 1995. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709-734) and Zucker's (1986. Research in Organizational Behavior, 8, 53-111) generic modes of trust, and combines their insights with a process perspective on trusting as proposed by Möllering (2001. Sociology, 35(2), 403-420). By acknowledging the process nature of trust as a leap of faith resulting from socio-cognitive (-emotional) interactions we move away from the passive evaluation of trustworthiness. Our findings suggest that trusting is a process that involves three social practices: (1) signaling ability and integrity; (2) demonstrating benevolence; and (3) establishing an emotional connection. Our study contributes to the trust literature on consulting and to trust research more generally by advancing a process approach and emphasizing the social, not merely mental, nature of trusting as involving a leap of faith

Realist Inquiry

Realism has become an influential philosophical foundation that has increasingly informed research in management studies. Realism, which assumes that the world external to the subject is mind-independent, offers a particularly attractive way out of the anthropocentrism and idealism in much contemporary research in management studies that detaches theorizing from its material conditions. This becomes especially problematic when understanding and handling the “Grand Challenges” closely connected with our material existence in the world. In this chapter, three different versions of realism – empirical, critical, and scientific realism – are introduced, and it is discussed how the latter two have informed management studies in terms of ontology, epistemology, and praxeology. Finally, some recommendations for future research are summarized