Scientification, immune responses, and reflection

Management consulting: a review of fifty years of scholarly research

Purpose

Academic research on management consulting or having management consultancy as the main research field is huge as the sector is a strategic one for management innovation, but a systematic and updated literature review is missing. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive systematic review of scholarly peer reviewed journals looking at the ambivalent roles of consultants in driving management innovation as well as management fashions.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review has been performed.

Findings

This paper provides a systematization of existing literature, where the state of the art is assessed and future research paths are highlighted.

Originality/value

The proposed research fills the gap concerning a review of literature on this topic and provides an analysis of 50 years of scholarly research, highlighting both the bright and dark sides of management consulting.

Towards increased relevance: context-adapted models of the learning organization

Purpose

– The purposes of this paper are to take a closer look at the relevance of the idea of the learning organization for organizations in different generalized organizational contexts; to open up for the existence of multiple, context-adapted models of the learning organization; and to suggest a number of such models.

Design/methodology/approach

– The suggested context-adapted models are deduced from works arguing that not all aspects of the idea of the learning organization should be adopted by organizations in some certain generalized organizational contexts.

Findings

– The idea of the learning organization needs to be reformulated, to some extent, to become fully relevant for public organizations, safety organizations, human service organizations and knowledge-intensive organizations.

Research limitations/implications

– To achieve a more inclusive contingency model than presented in this article, there is a need for further research examining the (full) relevance of the original learning organizational model for organizations in various certain generalized organizational contexts.

Practical implications

– Organizational actors could use one of the suggested context-adapted models fitting their particular organizational context as a starting point when considering adopting the learning organization.

Social implications

– Several adaptations suggested originate in social concerns.

Originality/value

– In contrast to most previous works on the learning organization, this paper adds to the existing literature by proposing several context-adapted models of the learning organization.

Bridging the Cultural Gap in Management Consulting Research

Although there are underlying assumptions that culture plays an important role in management consulting, cultural aspects have not yet been addressed explicitly in management consulting research. This article aims to show that the phenomenon of management consulting is culturally determined to a significant extent. At the same time, it will become clear that consultancies have a strong influence on clients, as well as on countries and societies. This will be discussed with the help of a proposed framework, consisting of four levels of analysis. Finally, the article ends with implications for future research aiming to amplify the culture-based consulting research programme.