Management Consultants - Friend or Foe? Understanding the Ambiguous Client-Consultant Relationship

Andreas Werr and Alexander Styhre

International Studies of Management & Organization, 2002, vol. 32, issue 4, 43-66

Abstract: How do managers discursively construct the consultant-client relationship? How do these constructions relate to managerial discourses of the bureaucratic and the network organization, and how can an observed ambiguous image of the consultant-client relationship among managers be understood? These are questions discussed in this article. It is concluded that managers discuss the actual use of and value creation in consulting in terms of the network discourse, while normative statements on how to manage consultants echo a bureaucratic discourse. We argue that research on management consulting must desert its anchoring in the bureaucratic discourse in order to contribute to a more constructive understanding of management consulting.

Date: 2002
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DOI: 10.1080/00208825.2002.11043670

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