Volume 6 (2023): Edition 1 (January 2023)

In the digital economy, consultants must help client’s companies develop digital transformation to increase their market value. This implementation requires the solutions we will indicate in this article. These solutions come from our interviews with 81 senior managers from eight countries. Consultants can make their consulting on digital transformation more effective with these solutions.

The diagnostic phase is the essential part of the consultancy cycle, providing the client with interpretable data and systematic approaches to improve the consultation effectiveness, however, there are still areas for improvement in diagnostic frameworks, data analysis, and client-consultant communication. This paper will demonstrate that although the diagnosis is an ongoing activity and a crucial node linking the whole consultancy cycle, it still requires using a mix of context-specific empirical tools and fostering a sustainable client-consultant relationship, dedicated to exploring the root causes of the organizational issue. In order to explain this, the paper will firstly focus on the importance of the diagnosis. Secondly, it will evaluate the diagnostic methods and data collection ways. Thirdly, it will discuss how to provide effective feedback to clients and build strong client-consultant relationship in the diagnostic phase. Finally, the paper will summarize the critical study of the diagnosis.

Consulting has evolved significantly over the years. This is in response to the changing operating environment and the emerging needs of organizations. To enrich client-consultant relationships, this article explores the changing philosophical positions around consulting and some of the applied techniques to make consulting an instrument of help in organizations. To enhance understanding of the varying consulting approaches, the article covers consulting approaches from Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, and Patrick Trottier. The philosophical positions and insights from their work will support the emerging consultant in deepening transformational consulting. Through a review of the literature and reflecting on the author’s consulting practice, the article summarizes approaches to enhance transformational consulting. These approaches advance the humanistic paradigm and as such promotes the co-creation of solutions with the client system. The article positions the Use of Self and Action Research as fundamental to enriching consultants’ productive impact. In addition, the article highlights four strength-based models that enrich the design of client-centered solutions.

This thesis seeks to investigate how Brexit has affected the management consulting industry for United Kingdom and European Union firms. The topic is of importance to the EU/UK management consulting community since Brexit caused disruption which in turn created an opportunity to analyze how this created costs and opportunity for firms. The study examines the relationship by first summarizing the events of Brexit through an annual order to identify which years presented the most change. The hypotheses of this study states that Brexit will have a negative effect on management consulting firm’s operations. It also states that there may be a positive effect for some firms that could profit from Brexit as a business, such as opportunity for new clientele. These changes are then identified through a close examination of secondary resources including papers, articles, and scholarly resources. There is also an analysis of primary source interviews conducted through the course of 2020-2021. The findings of this research were overshadowed by COVID-19’s negative effects on the management consulting industry in the UK. However, I do find evidence of both negative and positive effects; the results of the interviews shed light on the mechanisms. Specifically, I found that some firms were able to profit from Brexit by absorbing new clientele in need of Brexit specialists, and that there was a drive towards a need for new technology, specifically in the financial services sector.

In studies on consultant ethics clients are usually portrayed as their potential victims. However, in newspapers a different story can be found, when journalists report cased where clients and consultants have been partners in crime. To better map the common ethical transgressions in consulting, this study presents a top five based on interviews with consultants. In addition, the study illustrates these common transgressions with public jokes, found on the internet. The findings show how clients are not the only, and certainly not the most vulnerable stakeholder. Client interests are relatively well acknowledged in consultancies’ codes of conduct, and much more so than for example those of client staff, or junior consultants. This study contributes to consultant practice by emphasizing how consultant ethics should acknowledge more stakeholders than only clients. Likewise, it flags the issue of consultant independence, as it is consultants second most reported ethical challenge. The study contributes to the business ethics literature by demonstrating the illustrative value of business jokes in pointing at common ethical transgression, complementary to the less common and more severe cases journalists report about.

The International Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI) National Consulting Index (NCI) project was initiated in 2017. The project aims to identify the key conditions which help explain the relative strength of a country’s management consulting sector, and use these data to provide reasonable estimates of any country’s management consulting sector ($m) where this is not known.

The paper has two parts. The first shows the numerical data using the NCI formula and data from 33 national Institutes of Management Consulting (IMC). The second summarises the national trends and dynamics of the management consulting market in these IMC countries. It is presented as a resource for practitioners and researchers seeking to better understand the management consulting industry around the world.