1. O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Dr. Joe O’Mahoney and Calvert Markham
O’Mahoney and Markham: Management Consultancy, 2nd edition
Chapter 9: Critical Themes in Consulting

2. Chapter Objectives By the end of this lecture, you will be able to:
Explain the history and importance of critical thinking.
Outline the role of consultants in developing the knowledge economy.
Assess if consultants can be described as innovators.
Explain the professionalisation of the consulting industry.
Outline the relationship between consultancy and the risks inherent in modern capitalism.
Describe the approaches academics have taken to explain consulting identities.
Examine consultancy as a contributor to the spread of capitalism.

3. 9.1 Thinking Critically

4. Introduction: Thinking Critically
What being critical means.
What being critical is important
Unitarism vs. the sociological perspective
Critical management studies

5. 9.2 Knowledge & Innovation

6. Knowledge and innovation
The growth of information
The specialisation of work
Consultancies as innovators
The market
Fads & fashions
Networks
Evolving knowledge?
Not so innovative after all?

7. Consultants as knowledge managers
Applying knowledge
Commodifying knowledge
Legitimising knowledge

8. 9.3 Professions

9. Professions What is a profession? Why are professions interesting?
Is consultancy a profession?

10. Should consultants professionalise?
Reducing ethical problems?
Helping clients?
Helping consultants?

11. 9.3 Trust, Risk and Ambiguity

12. Trust, risk and ambiguity
Conditions of modernity
Sources of uncertainty
Dealing with ambiguity
Legitimating institutions
Trust
Distrust
Living in liminality
Charisma and the leap of faith

13. 9.4 Consulting identities

14. Consulting identities
From rationality to postmodernism
Consulting identities
Consulting as the elite
Consultants as scientists
Consultants as magicians
Too many identities?

15. 9.5 Culture, Colonisation and Capitalism

16. Colonisation and capitalism
The neo-liberal agenda
Missionaries for capitalism?
Aiding and abetting New Public Management
Cultural Relativism

17. Summary

18. Summary This chapter has shown that consultants:
Epitomise the rise of ‘knowledge workers’.
Contribute to the creation and diffusion of management innovations.
Find, apply, commodify and legitimate knowledge.
Exhibit some characteristics of becoming a profession.
Incorporate considerable ambiguities but there are also mechanisms for dealing with these.
Have identities that are complex, fragmented and contested.
Have been integral to the diffusion of neo-liberal capitalism.