Management Consulting: Towards an Integrative Framework of Knowledge, Identity, and Power

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12218
Published date01 April 2020
Date01 April 2020
International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 22, 120–149 (2020)
DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12218
Management Consulting: Towards an
Integrative Framework of Knowledge,
Identity, and Power
Szilvia Mosonyi , Laura Empson 1and Jean-Pascal Gond 1
School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK 1Cass Business
School, City, Universityof London, London EC1Y 8TZ, UK
Corresponding author email: S.Mosonyi@qmul.ac.uk
This paper reviews the past 28 years of scholarship on managementconsulting to syn-
thesize the field and establish more broadly its contribution to management research.
Through a systematic reviewof 219 articles, we identify three core conceptual themes –
knowledge, identity, and power – that have dominated the literature to date. Through
a thematic inductive analysis of a subsection of articles, we then investigate how these
themes have been defined, used, and linked. This allows us to uncover and problema-
tize the relationships between these themes. In making explicit underlying theoretical
assumptions and relationships between knowledge, identity, and power, we induce a
unique framework that can guide and support future studies, instigate metaparadig-
matic dialogue, and thus help consolidate the field.
Introduction
Following the exponential growthin the 1990s of the
management consulting sector, which by 2018/2019
generated revenues of US$634 billion and employed
more than 4.3 million people globally (IBISWorld
2019), academic interest in management consulting
has increased dramatically, with a series of dedi-
cated books, special issues, and a distinguished group
of scholars contributing to the debates (Armbr¨
uster
2006b; Clark and Kipping 2012; McKenna 2004;
Sturdy et al. 2015). The proliferation of academic
research has led to a rich and fragmented field that
is dispersed across publication outlets and preoccu-
pied with a diverse range of topics encompassing a
wide variety of theoretical perspectives (Armbr¨
uster
2006a; Kipping and Clark 2012; Mohe et al. 2011;
Sturdy et al. 2004). This richness and theoretical di-
versity drove our initial exploration of the literature
and motivated our focus on the identification of dom-
inant conceptual themes (e.g. knowledge, identity)
that span research paradigms. While theoretical di-
versity often enriches our understanding of a complex
phenomenon, such as consulting (see e.g. Armbr¨
uster
2006a), it may also simultaneously hinder discourse
across theoretical boundaries (Deetz 1996; Lewis and
Grimes 1999) and obscure overallcontrib utions to the
field (Rousseau et al. 2008). Forinstance, a given con-
ceptual theme (e.g. power)may be investigated exten-
sively in one stream of studies (e.g. critically inspired
studies of consulting) and ignored in others (Lewis
and Grimes 1999). We seek to demonstrate that by
focusing on how these themes are analysed across
research streams, we can problematize the literature,
challenge its assumptions, and provide an alternative
way to think about management consulting.
While we build on previous reviews of the field
(e.g. Armbr¨
uster 2006b; Fincham and Clark 2002a),
we move away from prior paradigmatic categoriza-
tions of the literature (e.g. ‘functionalist’ vs ‘criti-
cal’) to provide a ‘metaparadigmatic’ map. The map
is metaparadigmatic in the sense that it looks across
paradigms to create links and to instigate concep-
tual dialogues between distant streams of manage-
ment consulting studies, providing ‘a more holistic
view that transcends paradigm distinctions to reveal
C2019 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Publishedby John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington
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Management Consulting 121
disparity and complementarity’ (Lewis and Grimes
1999, p. 673). This approach is well suited to re-
viewing a theoretically diverse literature, as it allows
a more engaged conversation about specific themes
and concepts across multiple paradigms (for a similar
approach, see Corlett et al. 2015).
In analysing systematically and developing a the-
matic coding of the content of previous studies across
the diverse field of management consulting, we aim
to deliver a threefold contribution to organization and
management theory. First, we offer an up-to-date, re-
producible, and consolidated overview of manage-
ment consulting research that identifies recent shifts
and emerging trends in the past 28 years, while estab-
lishing its contribution to management research more
generally. Second, based on the detailed inductive
analysis of the content of 113 articles, we construct
a unique metaparadigmatic framework that offers an
alternative wayto understand the field and can be used
for theoretical, empirical, and practical purposes. By
looking at how prior studies conceptualize three core
themes (i.e. knowledge,identity, and power),we prob-
lematize the literature making explicit paradigmatic
assumptions. We use these three themes to identify
patterns that span paradigms and conflicting under-
standings. In so doing, in ways that haveimplications
for contemporary work, we seek to change the way
we think about the phenomenon of consulting in re-
lation to knowledge, identity, and power. Third and
finally, by using this unique framework, we create
bridges across distinct research paradigms and at a
metaparadigmatic level enable the cross-fertilization
and dialogue about knowledge, identity, and power –
and their relationships – in the consultancy literature.
In so doing, we offer a renewed research agenda.
Consolidating research on
management consulting
Responsible for the re-establishment of McKinsey
in 1939 and strongly associated with its subsequent
success, it was Marvin Bower who first used the term
‘management consulting’ (McKenna 2006). Since
then, the term has become broad (Furusten 2009),
and no generally accepted definition has emerged
(Fincham et al. 2013; Gl¨
uckler and Armbr¨
uster
2003). Following the classifications of Kubr (2002)
and Sturdy (2011), the term may describe providing
assistance in a broad sense (Fincham et al. 2013;
Furusten 2009) or, more precisely, it may refer to
the distinctive role, organization, and identity of
consultants (Fincham and Clark 2002b; Kipping
and Kirkpatrick 2013; Kitay and Wright 2007). This
latter approach defines management consulting as a
‘service contracted for and provided to organizations
by specially trained and qualified persons who assist,
in an objective and independent manner,the client or-
ganization to identify management problems, analyse
such problems, recommend solutions to these prob-
lems, and help, when requested,in the implementation
of solutions’ (Greiner and Metzger, 1983, p. 7). We
take this definition as the basis of our investigation.
Towards the constitution of the field
Academic interest in management consulting lagged
the development of the sector. While management
consultancy can trace its origins back to the Taylorist
movement of the early 1900s (Kipping 1997; Wright
and Kipping 2012), it was not until the end of the
1950s that academics started to show interest in the
phenomenon, although consultants themselves had
begun writing about their work somewhat earlier
(Armenakis and Burdg 1988). The authors of the first
academic articles came either from social psychology
(Havelock 1971) or from the organizational develop-
ment (OD) and process consulting tradition (Argyris
1970; Schein 1969). This largely prescriptive body of
work, the so-called ‘orthodox’ (also labelled ‘func-
tionalist’) consulting literature, remained dominant
until the mid-1980s (Fincham 1999). In these early
days, practitioners generallyhad a more extensive and
practical knowledge of strategic management, and
their expertise was incorporated into the academic
discourse as a ‘quasi-scientific element’ (Nicolai and
R¨
obken 2005, p. 417). Consultants were viewed by
this prescriptive managerialist literature as collabora-
tive facilitators and experts, working in harmony with
their clients to help them achieve organizational de-
velopment and change (Fincham 1999; Sturdy et al.
2009a).
From the 1990s, the emergence of critical academic
voices began to transform the evolution and focus
of the field. Critical management scholars started
to question the supposedly collaborative nature of
consulting (Clark 1995; Fincham and Clark 2002b;
Sturdy 1997) and disputed the professional status
of the industry and consultants’ knowledge claims,
as well as their effectiveness and value in achieving
change (Alvesson 1993; Fincham and Clark 2002a).
They drew attention to the ambiguous role consul-
tants play in disseminating management fashions and
fads (Abrahamson 1996; Benders et al. 1998).
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