The Client-Consultant Relationship in Professional Business Service Firms

334 Pages·2007·4.506 MB·English

by  Natalia Nikolova

Edition KWV
Natalia Nikolova
The Client-Consultant
Relationship in
Professional Business
Service Firms
Edition KWV
Die „Edition KWV“ beinhaltet hochwertige Werke aus dem Bereich der Wirtschaftswissen-
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Natalia Nikolova
The Client-Consultant
Relationship in Professional
Business Service Firms
Natalia Nikolova
University of Technology Sydney
Broadway NSW, Australia
Bis 2018 erschien der Titel im Kölner Wissenschaftsverlag, Köln
Dissertation Universität zu Köln, 2006
Edition KWV
ISBN 978-3-658-24375-3 ISBN 978-3-658-24376-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-24376-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931756
Springer Gabler
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2007, Reprint 2019
Originally published by Kölner Wissenschaftsverlag, Köln, 2007
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Foreword
Professional business service firms are one of the most dynamic and advanced industries
in the modern economy. Interestingly, the increasing economic significance of
professional business services in all developed economies has been accompanied by
increasing client dissatisfaction with those services. As a result, there has been a growing
academic interest in the nature of the client-consultant relationship, and it has been
recognized that the integration of the client in the consulting process is the most
important success factor for professional business service firms. However, existing
approaches are contradictory in their theoretical foundations and scientific objectives.
Most importantly, they do not address the complexity of the client-consultant relationship
offering only restricted view of its nature and success factors.
This thesis concentrates on the relationship between client organizations and
professional business service firms. Based on a comprehensive critical discussion of the
existing literature on client-consultant relationships, Natalia Nikolova develops an
innovative conceptual framework - the “interpretative model” - of the client-consultant
interaction. The framework represents an analytical tool that sheds light on two
interrelated issues: the cultural relations between clients and professional service
providers and their political relations. By showing the connection and the interrelation
between the cognitive and political dimension of consulting, the author provides a more
nuanced view on the client-consultant relationship and provides new avenues to
overcome long existing boundaries between different research streams and perspectives.
The result is a multidimensional and multi-disciplinary view of the client-consultant
interaction that sheds light on a number of hitherto under-explored issues and makes a
significant contribution to the literature on client-consultant relationships. This
remarkable thesis deserves high praise in the academic discussion as well as in the
business community. The academic advisor and editor of this series as well as Natalia’s
mentor wish this work a very positive reception.

Werner Delfmann Markus Reihlen
Preface
This book is about professional business service firms in general and consulting
companies in particular; about experts and management gurus; about human cognition;
about knowledge and knowledge transfer; about power and its influence on knowledge
transfer and learning; about management fads and fashions. In short, it is about the nature
of client-consultant interactions during consulting projects.
Soon after I started to do research in this area, I realized that I could not write about
client-consultant relationships without stressing that such relationships are ultimately
relationships between groups of people who bring their different perspectives, views,
interests, goals and motivations into their joint work. What fascinated me the most was
the opportunity that this topic offered to me to discuss client-consultant relationships
from a number of different theoretical perspectives and to connect these different
perspectives in order to shed some light on issues that are highly relevant for the outcome
of consulting projects but were less explored in the existing research on consulting. This
meant that I had to ask questions, such as what is the nature of knowledge in general and
of consulting knowledge in particular and what characterizes knowledge transfer and
learning within client-consultant teams; what is the nature of power in client-consultant
teams and how does power influence consulting projects; and finally, how are both these
areas connected to each other, how do they influence each other and what implications
does this discussion have for the nature and success of client-consultant relationships? In
order to answer those questions, I had to familiarize myself with a number of theoretical
areas including philosophy of social sciences, sociology, neurobiology and discourse
analysis. This journey was quite demanding but also very enlightening for me as it made
me appreciate the complex nature of social interaction as well as the need to include this
complexity when studying social issues. I trust that the reader will appreciate the richness
of this approach.
A great number of people have supported me in the course of this intellectual journey
and I owe them my deepest thanks.
My first thank goes to my mentor, Markus Reihlen, from the University of Cologne,
whose advice, suggestions and comments contributed greatly to the outcome of this
work. Markus was always very courteous and with his support, I mastered even the most
difficult moments of this journey without loosing my confidence that I am on the right
track. I would further like to thank my supervisor, Werner Delfmann, for his constructive
discussion of this manuscript and his generous advice on substantive matters. Tim
Devinney offered not only helpful advice and ideas for my work but he also supported
my professional transfer from Germany to Australia and introduced me to the Australian
research community. I would also like to thank Stewart Clegg for his helpful comments
on parts of this work as well as Anne Ross-Smith for her support during my first year at
the University of Technology Sydney when I really needed the time to concentrate on
finishing this manuscript. Furthermore, I thank all participants in the Standing Working
Group on ‘Professional service organizations and professionalization at work’ at the 2004
and 2005 EGOS Colloquia for their valuable comments on parts of this work. In
viii
particular, I would like to thank Timothy Clark, Robin Fincham, Royston Greenwood,
Andrew Sturdy and Celeste Wilderom for their helpful advice and critical comments on
my work in progress. In addition, my special thanks go to Konstantin Stoyanov who was
enthusiastic about this work from the early days on. He read the manuscript several times
and his suggestions contributed a great deal to the structure and explanatory power of this
work. He never stopped short of encouraging me to go one step further and to reassess
my work. I would also like to thank Pauline Olive and Sandra Peter for helping me to
finalize the manuscript in its very last and critical details. Finally, great thanks is owed to
my family. My husband I thank for his support and patience and for always encouraging
me to give my best. My very special thank goes to my parents who have embraced every
project that I started and every journey that I undertook. I dedicate this work to my mum
whom I owe my confidence, courage and optimism. She is a never-ending inspiration for
my life.

Natalia Nikolova
Contents

A. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................1
I. Problem and Aim.......................................................................................1
II. Structure and Contents.............................................................................9
B. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS..........................................................12
I. Definitions and concepts..........................................................................12
1. Professional business services..........................................................................12
1.1 Norm-oriented approach.................................................................................14
1.2 Structure-oriented approach............................................................................15
1.3 Pragmatic approach.........................................................................................16
1.4 Work - or knowledge-oriented approach........................................................19
2. Management consulting...................................................................................24
2.1 Management consulting’ status as a profession..............................................25
2.2 Attributes of management consulting services...............................................27
2.2.1 Temporary service............................................................................................27
2.2.2 High degree of personal judgment by the service provider..............................28
2.2.3 High intensity of interaction.............................................................................29
2.2.4 High intangibility of services...........................................................................30
2.2.5 A critical discussion of the attributes of consulting services............................31
2.3 Consulting success..........................................................................................32
3. Summary...........................................................................................................33
II. A systemic framework for the analysis of client-consultant
relationships..............................................................................................34
1. A systemic perspective of client-consultant teams.........................................35
2. Attributes of clients and consultants..............................................................39
2.1 Cognitive attributes.........................................................................................39
2.2 Motivational attributes....................................................................................43
2.3 Interactive attributes.......................................................................................44
3. (Immediate) environment / Context of project assignments........................46
3.1 A general problem typology...........................................................................47
x
3.1.1 Exact and inexact problems..............................................................................47
3.1.2 Routine and innovative problems.....................................................................48
3.2 A problem typology of client-consultant projects...........................................49
3.2.1 Simple routine / low interaction / efficiency problems.....................................50
3.2.2 Complex routine / moderate-interaction / experience problems.......................51
3.2.3 Innovative / high-interaction / creativity problems...........................................53
3.3 Trends within the immediate environment......................................................54
3.4 Organizational field of management knowledge production
and dissemination............................................................................................56
3.4.1 Consulting companies.......................................................................................57
3.4.2 Client organizations..........................................................................................58
3.4.3 Business schools...............................................................................................59
3.4.4 Publishing companies.......................................................................................60
4. Structural relations...........................................................................................61
4.1 Cultural relations.............................................................................................61
4.1.1 The coupling of cultural and economic relations..............................................61
4.1.2 Task-specific and task-related knowledge........................................................62
4.1.3 Cultural relations: theoretical conceptions of knowledge.................................64
4.2 Economic relations..........................................................................................69
4.3 Political relations.............................................................................................73
4.3.1 Formal political structure..................................................................................73
4.3.2 Types of political relations................................................................................74
4.3.3 Power relations: theoretical conceptions of power...........................................76
4.4 Social mechanisms for integrating and coordinating
of cultural production......................................................................................85
4.5 Relations with the environment.......................................................................91
5. Summary............................................................................................................92
C. ESTABLISHED MODELS OF THE CLIENT-CONSULTANT
INTERACTION...................................................................................94
I. Introduction..............................................................................................94
II. The expert model......................................................................................96
1. Introduction.......................................................................................................96
2. Context...............................................................................................................97
3. Cultural relations..............................................................................................98