Introduction: From Management Consultant to Psychological Counsel

Construction Economics and Building, 2011

, 347 pages, USD 26.95, AUD 53.95, GBP 18.99. Every so often a book comes along that reminds us of the fact that building and construction is different from other industries, and highlights some interesting points about those differences. Reading Walter Kiechel's Lords of Strategy was one of those experiences. The strategists of the title were the men who founded the firms and created the modern management consultant industry. These men (and with few exception the characters in the book are all men, many of them with engineering degrees) and their ideas have fundamentally changed the world we live and work in through their effect on the corporate world, and in particular their effect on the largest global corporations that dominate the modern industrial and post-industrial economic landscape.

Business History Review, 2006

British Journal of Management, 2011

This paper takes the long view on the development of strategy as a profession, from the 1950s to today. We identify strategy as a structurally precarious profession, subject to cyclical demand and shifts in organizational power. This precariousness has increased with the secular shift towards more open forms of strategy-making, with more transparency inside and outside organizations and more inclusion of different actors internally and externally. We analyse four forces -organizational, societal, cultural and technological -driving the evolution of strategy as a profession and discuss implications for the future of strategy work, for effective strategies, for strategy's professional bodies and for strategy research.

1995

In 1993, AT&T spent more on management consulting services than on corporate research and development, and AT&T is not alone [8, p. 60]. Wall Street analysts expect billings for consulting services to advance at twice the rate of corporate revenues over the next decade. Yet, despite the size, growth, and influence of consulting firms, business historians have remained uncharacteristically silent about the origins, development, and impact of management consulting, or "management engineering" as it was known before the Second World War. 2 In this paper, I will describe the professional origins of management consulting firms at the turn of the century and discuss why, after slow, gradual growth through the 1920s, these firms took off during the 1930s. I argue (1) that historians have wrongly assumed that management consulting arose directly out of Taylorism, (2) that engineers, accountants, and lawyers, often supervised by merchant bankers, provided counsel that later became the primary repertoire of management consultants, and (3) that the legal separation of investment and commercial banking in 1933 drove the rapid professionalization and growth of management consulting during the Great Depression. Recent historians of scientific management, including Daniel Nelson, Stephen Waring, and Judith Merkle, have traced the impact of Taylorism on contemporary institutions as diverse as business education, public administration, and British industry long after the Progressive-era craze for "efficiency" ended [29, 36, 26]. The proponents of scientific management, Frederick Taylor, Henry Gantt, Morris Cooke, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and Harrington Emerson, consulted with nearly 200 businesses on ways to systematize the activities of their workers through the application of wage incentives, time-motion studies, and industrial psychology [29, p. 11]. Naturally then, historians of Taylorism have assumed that they could describe contemporary practitioners of "industrial engineering," "production This article is drawn from my dissertation, "The History of Management Consulting, 1880-980." 2 The Association of Management Consultants (ACME) defines management consulting as a service provided for a fee by objective outsiders who help executives improve the management, operations, and economic performance of institutions. Since the institutionalization and professionalization of management consulting occurred within firms, not among solo practitioners, this paper focuses on management consulting firms.

Human Relations, 2019

This article analyses contemporary issues relevant to understanding the changing nature of management and managerial work. The argument is developed in four parts. First, to provide context, we offer an overview of the literature on the organization and control of managerial work, tracing contributions mainly from the early 1950s onwards. Second, we discuss the first of two related concerns relevant to understanding the contemporary nature of managerial work – strategies of organizational restructuring: an analysis highlighting the role of downsizing and delayering within corporate campaigns promoting ‘post-bureaucratic’ systems. Third, we extend this discussion by addressing how such corporate restructuring affects managers in their everyday work – notably in relation to the perceptions and realities of growing job insecurity and career uncertainty: an analysis that frequently draws upon our own investigations to establish an agenda for future research. The article concludes by sum...

Organizational Dynamics, 2010

Management Consulting Journal

2012

Strategic Change, 2005

There is considerable research evidence to confirm that the accumulation of knowledge contributes to the competitive advantage of firms. However, in strategy consulting, one of the most knowledge-intensive professional services, established firms that exploited their knowledge accumulation by adding exploitative consulting practices have found their performance has deteriorated.The increasing share of exploitative practices in the strategy consulting industry has attracted both established ICT-related consulting firms and new entrants. Moreover, it has enabled clients to expand their problem-solving abilities. These developments, in terms of competitiveness and client competencies, have reduced the attractiveness of exploitative practices for established strategy consulting firms.To analyse this development and to provide strategic options for the established firms, a conceptual framework is proposed. Based on this framework three strategic options are identified: ‘follow the herd’, ‘become ambidextrous’ and ‘back to the original focus’. In summarizing our argument, we highlight the pros and cons of these options and the implications for senior management.There is considerable research evidence to confirm that the accumulation of knowledge contributes to the competitive advantage of firms. However, in strategy consulting, one of the most knowledge-intensive professional services, established firms that exploited their knowledge accumulation by adding exploitative consulting practices have found their performance has deteriorated.The increasing share of exploitative practices in the strategy consulting industry has attracted both established ICT-related consulting firms and new entrants. Moreover, it has enabled clients to expand their problem-solving abilities. These developments, in terms of competitiveness and client competencies, have reduced the attractiveness of exploitative practices for established strategy consulting firms.To analyse this development and to provide strategic options for the established firms, a conceptual framework is proposed. Based on this framework three strategic options are identified: ‘follow the herd’, ‘become ambidextrous’ and ‘back to the original focus’. In summarizing our argument, we highlight the pros and cons of these options and the implications for senior management.Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Long Range Planning, 1995

The fundamental structural transitions in a wide variety of industries brought about by major catalysts such as deregulation, global competition, technological discontinuities, and changing customer expectations are imposing new strains on managers around the world. Old recipes do not work anymore. Managers, concerned with restoring competitiveness of their firms, are abandoning traditional approaches to strategy; they are searching for new approaches that give guidance in a turbulent environment. Many academics, confronted with the same reality, are reexamining the relevance of the concepts and tools of the strategy field. In the absence of a consistent and useful strategy paradigm that they can use, managers appear to have embraced attention to 'implementation' as their saviour, more or less abandoning strategy as either unimportant or uninteresting. Academics continue to search for new approaches. This special issue of the Strategic Management Journal presents creative and new thinking dealing with substantive issues and methodologies that can lead to the evolution of a new paradigm(s). As we entered the 1990s, strategy as a field of study had fallen on hard times. Humbled by new global competitors, managers were consumed with TQM, reengineering, downsizing, teamwork and employee empowerment. Managerial preoccupation was with 'catching up' with the best of breed among their competitors. Issues of strategy seemed either remote, unimportant or uninteresting to many. The key words were 'implementation' and 'execution'. Strategy, some managers seemed to assume, was easy; implementation was the hard part. As a consequence, strategy staffs were dramatically reduced or eliminated. Consultants readjusted their wares to cope with the new client demands. Even wellknown consulting firms, such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), who built their Key words: Strategy paradigms, innovative strategy research, paradigm evolution I See, for example, the focus of BCG on 'Time Based Competition'. Two senior consultants of BCG wrote the very popular book on the subject, George Stalk, Jr. and Thomas M. Hout, (1990). Competing Against Time: How Time Based Competition is Reshaping Global Markers, Free Press, New York.