A young management consultant wondering how to become a better consultant will usually be told by more experienced colleagues to “gain more experience”. Of course, experience plays a major role in a management consultants’ individual process of professionalizing. However, simply gaining more experience will not challenge a young management consultant to choose roads less travelled. And this is where professionalizing starts to go in the wrong direction. In the Netherlands, there is a lot of debate on the topic of professionalizing the management consulting profession. In spite of this observation, there still is no such thing as a common body of knowledge and skills for the management consulting profession. Mutually exclusive points of view remain equally valid, which is something impossible in medical science, constructional science or legal science. This is a curious, confusing and striking phenomenon. The road which leads to ‘more of the same kind’ is the easy road. I will conduct a case for the difficult road: the road of scientific knowledge development. This development of scientific management consulting knowledge demands a close cooperation – yet not integration – between scientists and management consultants. And this cooperation will pay-off, as verifiable logic will show.
Why we should professionalize our management consulting profession
Clients do not literally ask consultants to professionalize. They almost never ask critical questions about the workmanship of management consultants. Nor do any legislators. Nevertheless, there is lots of debate amongst management consultants in the Netherlands. This is easily explained by the consultants’ widespread wish to act according to ethical standards and to justify their right to exist. Clients pay management consultants for state-of-the-art knowledge and proven methods, so there is a need for evaluating and choosing the best theory and methodology. In addition, professionalizing means increasing your added value as a management consultant. Many consultants (and their practice leaders) often confuse debate on professionalizing with business development. In such cases, a claim for a competitive edge is not preceded by new and verified scientific insights and theory on our profession. This observation is explained by the relatively low maturity level of the management consulting profession, when compared to the medical, constructional and legal profession.
Development of the science of consulting
Much has been said about interdependences between the science of business administration and management consulting. The profession based “Orde van organisatieadviseurs” (management consultants order), which was founded already in 1941, merged with the scientific based “Academisch genootschap van Organisatiekundigen” (academic organization theoreticians society) some thirty-five years ago. This was the beginning of the “Orde van organisatiekundigen en -adviseurs” (organization theoreticians and management consultants order). One of the main objectives of this order is to provide a platform for knowledge sharing and promotion. Many possibilities for knowledge synergies between the science of business administration and management consulting can intuitively be identified. After all, consulting in the actual business practice provides a great amount of research data. In addition, the trends and developments in organizing a business are interesting to both scientists and consultants. Consultants want to consult managers on practical solutions to challenges related to these trends and developments. And scientists want to research to introduce new or better theories. In this scenario, the science of business administration is one of the individual consultant’s growth accelerators. At the same time, scepticism is appropriate here. Many research based theories don’t work in practice or insufficiently provide reliable predictions or explanations. Yet, somehow these theories refuse to become extinct. Even if it becomes apparent that the validity of many theories is limited to a fixed context or time period. Back in 1941, consultants and scientists were unaware of the future findings of Karl Popper (the introduction of the pursuit of disproof as source for scientific knowledge) and Thomas Kuhn (the introduction of paradigms in science). These findings were yet to be discovered and accepted. In the year 2008 however, it is about time for scientists in business administration to start applying these scientific ground rules rigorously. And management consultants can be of great help here. Not because they are idealists. But because they are ambitious about professionalizing the management consulting profession.
A management consultant uses theory from the business administration sciences, yet does not contribute to the development of theory
Management consultants are consumers of scientific theories, but do not validate these theories in their practices. This is a missed opportunity for contributing to new or improved theories. New theories have a right to exist when old theories no longer satisfyingly explain and predict observations from business practice. A logical conclusion would be at this point, that the circumstances in which a theory can be dismissed should be clear. This is one of many of the responsibilities of scientists. Management consultants are offered a unique possibility for exploring the borders of their profession since they are working in business practices everyday. They will be the first to know, when a theory no longer applies. Dismissing such theories usually leads to a gradual adaptation, for example by specifying the circumstances in which the theory still does apply. In special cases, theories lose their right to exist and a new scientific paradigm originates. This sounds much easier than it actually is. Making all relevant variables explicit in practice is as good as impossible. Validating scientific business administration theories is difficult. But this being difficult is not a valid reason not to do so. Anything can be researched scientifically. Scientists in business administration and management consultants are not accountable to each other, and it can be stated that they could go on without cooperation. Scientists are after all solely compelled to scientific methodologies and have to fit in with the scientific state-of-art in their concerning field of study. And management consultants on the other hand, are barely interested in the stochastic theory from business administration scientists, because clients demand deterministic advice. Stochastic theory consists of causalities, captured in rules and guidelines. In practice, these rules and guidelines may or may not lead to the desired result. This essay is a plea for closer cooperation between scientists and consultants, because they need each other in the development of their respective fields of study. Cooperation offers opportunities for both developing better theory and offering better advice in practice. Cooperation however, cannot always be established.
Let’s start cooperating, because our methods correspond
Let’s start with the good news first. Management consultants work in two separate stages on the development of their advice. The first stage is a search for an answer to the question: “what is the current condition of the organization and where is it headed?”. Standard methods used by management consultants in this diagnosis stage include individual interviews, group interviews, surveys, document study, desk research, observations and assessments. These methods are founded on the business administration sciences. Within this business administration science view, organizations are constructs that can be studied, and cooperation between scientists and consultants is possible following the process described earlier. Then there’s the bad news. In the second stage, management consultants use interventions to contribute to an answer to the question: “how does the organization get to where it is headed?”. Interventions are used to change the way people in organizations think and work together. The methods management consultants use in this intervention stage are founded on the social sciences. Within the social science view, organizations are social constructs in which the management consultant is one of the participants that interact. The consequence is that this interaction cannot be researched from within. Scientific logic implies, that the management consulting profession can actively contribute to scientific knowledge creation and improvement, as long as it is based on his actions and findings in the diagnosis stage. For the intervention stage, management consultants cannot contribute to scientific knowledge creation and improvement. They can however be studied as object of research by social scientists.
Science in a consultants practice: diagnose: yes, intervene: no
Science is characterized by individual observations of univocal, objective truths. Validity claims for such truths are prescribed by the correspondence between reality and degree of replication. Limitations to this approach are that it is not possible to judge on knowledge domains aimed at inward and subjective intentions (realness as opposed to truth), relational values and norms (rightness as opposed to truth) and collective observations (functionality as opposed to truth). A management consultant diagnosing an organization, is actually using a scientific approach characterized by a ‘search for truth’, while a management consultant intervening in an organization is actually using a scientific approach characterized by an ‘aim for functionality’. During the diagnosis stage, a management consultant can therefore actively validate the explanatory or predictability power of a theory in the perceived truth of the practice. During the intervention stage, a management consultant is participating in the truth of the practice, which results in an inability to univocally perceive superficial and objective truths. Scientific research on interventions is still possible, but the management consultant should not take an active role in this research. This is exactly why this essay is a plea for cooperation, but not integration of the consulting and scientific professions.
Designing the cooperation between management consultants and scientists
Management consultants that share an ambition to add more value in practice, should ‘search for more truth’. A cooperation between management consultants and scientists is needed to achieve this ambition. A cooperation that seems difficult to get off the ground. To a large extent, this is caused by different languages used by management consultants and business administration scientists. A more common language is needed. In addition, disprovable theories are required. This is the responsibility of the scientist. In the event of an abnormality in practice, it is the responsibility of the management consultant to write a case study and contribute this case study to scientific debates. For that matter, case studies will only contribute to our scientific knowledge if they disprove of a theory. If a case study verifies an existing theory, that theory remains unadjusted, and progression cannot be made. For this reason, case studies should be well aimed at existing theories. It seems that a suited platform and protocol for such case study fuelled debates is not easily available. The Association of Management Consulting Firms could be a well suited option. During the intervention stage, cooperation between scientist and management consultant is more complex. The only contribution management consultants can make, is to make their behaviour and interventions as explicit as possible. Social scientists are the only outsiders in this stage, and are therefore the only party able to observe and disprove. In this intervention stage, management consultants are the object of social science research.
This essay was first published by Arts, O.P. & Bergh, F.S. van den (2007).
