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Hi.
My name is Andrew Sturdy,
and I'm a professor
of management at the University
of Bristol in the UK.
This lecture is going to explore
consultancy's consequences.
That is, what is the impact
of management consultancy
or management in particular.
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Overall, I'm going to be
focusing on the claims
that are made for
management consultancy,
and how we can treat these
with some sort of skepticism,
question what's behind these
claims, and how valid are they.
In fact, people make massive claims
about management consultancy,
both critical and celebratory.
In the media, consultants
are blamed for all sorts of ills
and castigated.
In research terms,
they're celebrated and also
castigated for some of
the ills and successes
within the world of business
and organizations, in particular.
But I will be arguing that there
are good reasons for skepticism.
In fact, the claims
made for consultancy
are sometimes overstated,
and sometimes understated.
This lecture is based on research
that I've been doing
over the last 25 years.
In particular, two large
projects on external consultants
and internal consultants.
As well as looking at all
the research literature,
and information around
management consultancy.
It's also based on a
plenary speech I delivered
at the Academy of
Management, Management
Consultant Division Conference.
And was subsequently
published in an article.
And the sources for all
the things that I say
are set out in this article, and
the details are provided at the end.
So I'm just going to talk
about the ideas here,
and later on, if you
need those details,
you can refer to the article itself.
Overall, I'm going to outline
some of the impacts of
management consultancy,
but really focusing on some
of the problems of
identifying those, trying
to find out what lies behind them.
In particular, there's a problem
in identifying where management
consultancy and management divide.
They're becoming very similar.
The boundary between
them is becoming
increasingly diffuse and dynamic.
And this raises a
problem as, where can we
attribute the role of
consultancy against the role
of management and other groups?
