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Welcome, everybody,
to this talk about
client-consultant interaction.
My name is Irene
Skovgaard Smith, and I'm
senior lecturer, organizational
behavior, Anglia Ruskin University.
Originally my background
is in anthropology,
so I study what people do and
how they interact with each other
and relate to each other in
everyday organizational life.
So what I did for my PhD was I
studied management consultants
and their interactions
with their clients
and in the context of
client organizations.
So today that is
going to be my topic.
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So why is it interesting to look
at client-consultant interaction?
The reason for that is that
in quite an obvious way
you could say that consultants
interact with people.
That's how they
deliver their service.
There is no consulting outside
of that crucial interaction
with clients.
So that space is actually where
consulting comes into being.
So we can study consultants
and talk about consultants
in many different
ways, their industry,
but ultimately, without that
interaction in client organizations
there is no consulting.
In this particular space between
clients and consultants,
that is where it all happens.
And that depends to a large extent
on how people in those client
organizations actually perceive the
consultants, how they experience
them, how they position them.
And that determines
what they can do,
and the opportunities they have,
and the limitations they have,
or being able to influence
anything in that context.
So this is why
client-consultant interaction
is a crucial aspect of understanding
what consulting is all about.
