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The author writes from experience, originally as a member of the Aslib Consultancy Service and subsequently as an independent consultant. She explores the expectations of the client and the consultant, qualities desirable in consultants and job satisfactions, and goes on to analyse in detail the consulting process, the pathology of information systems and the role of library consultants as change agents.

Consultancy services for internationalisation are crucial to help companies to grow and find new businesses abroad. This kind of service used to be provided by consultancy firms operating in the home country of the clients. Considering the advantages of partnerships that theory has enhanced, this paper aims to identify the motivations and perceived opportunities from consultancy firms to establish business-to-business partnerships with international consultancy companies in other countries, with the purpose of reinforcing international trading.

As an exploratory study, this paper shows the perspective of 13 interviewed German consultancy managers focused on international business about developing a partnership with international consultancy firms from Portugal.

Consultants indicate that with mutual benefits, partnerships are welcome. However, the study enhances the importance of signals of status and reputation for international partnerships among business consultancy firms and reveals a lack of knowledge about the market opportunities for internationalisation that might motivate German consultancy firms to establish partnerships with consultancy companies in Portugal.

The paper highlights the low motivation of consultants from a higher-status country to establish partnerships with international business consultancy firms in lower-status countries. The study addresses useful recommendations for consultancy firms, governments and international trade agencies to intensify marketing activities and enhance country reputation and positioning in international business, communicating the opportunities and potential of markets and building signals of status and reputation for international consulting.

Many criticisms questioning the role and the efficiency of business consultants have been addressed. However, although a great deal of research has been carried out on business consultancy, little has been written on business consultancy from the consultant's viewpoint. In order to gain a detailed view of the situation from an internal consultant's perspective, an investigation of how business consultants perceive their role and contribution within their clients' organisations was undertaken. Drawing on different perspectives, this study aims to demystify the role of business consultants, and to ascertain how they perceive their role within their clients' organisations.

A series of interviews were conducted, where business consultants were asked to comment on issues related to the nature of the relationship with their clients, the pros and cons of their role and also the amount of control and discretion they exercise over the different projects in which they are engaged. Interview data from 17 business consultants from a variety of fields, such as change management, information technology, corporate finance and human resource, are analysed using an interpretive frame.

The research findings reveal that differences exist between the rather pejorative conclusions of previous research and the conclusions of this study. Whereas previous research highlighted the omnipotence and the more or less deontological practice of consultants, the data analysis from this study concludes that business consultants appear very humble in their approach to their relationship with clients, and believe that moving clients forward is their ultimate goal. The findings also enable the study to demonstrate that business consultants are conscious of the amount of control and discretion that is passed on to them by clients, and do recognise that criticisms of their role can be at times justified.

The study has value for both consultants and clients. The role determinants model presented in the study highlights the main characteristics of the role of business consultants and helps both clients and consultants to rethink their approach to the consulting process.

Consultancies provide a beneficial teaching tool in linking industry with supply chain education. With the scarcity of supply chain talent and real life experience, there is a real interest in using consultancy modules to bring the two worlds closer. This research paper aims to explore the challenges faced by key stakeholders (clients, lecturers and students) who participate in a supply chain management (SCM) consultancy module.

Case study methodology is used to describe the challenges faced by the stakeholders in running a SCM consultancy module. Using the existing literature on consultancy module challenges as a point of departure, this paper explores these challenges within a SCM consultancy module. A triangulated research approach allowed capturing the views of the key stakeholders.

The findings confirmed that the case entailed all initial 13 challenges faced by key stakeholders, as well as four more challenges (health and safety risks; expertise assessment; depicting supply chain management boundaries; and SCM consultancy skills) which were relevant to the SCM field.

The paper offers an insight into the challenges of teaching a supply chain management consultancy module and addresses the issues for academics to bridge the divide between theory and practice.

This paper assists supply chain educators in consultancy module development and helps companies willing to participate in such modules prepare for the challenges that they will encounter. It also contributes to debate on SCM difficulties in building business‐university collaboration.

Consultancy challenges observed in higher education have been based on individual cases and mainly covered in the marketing literature. This paper is the first case study that depicts all consultancy module challenges faced by key stakeholders and within the supply chain management subject; it highlights some subject relevant challenges for supply chain educators.

The size structure of the executive recruitment consultancy industry is similar to that found in other business service industries in that the industry is predominantly comprised of small firms. This paper considers the reasons for small firm size in the industry and looks at the implications this has for expansion into Europe. The size structure of the industry is mainly due to the nature of the outcome, the service provision process and the barriers to growth which are a result of the particular client‐consultant relationship. Increased globalization of markets has led to an increase in the amount of international work carried out by executive recruitment consultancies. The larger international consultancies with branches in most European countries are in a strong position to take advantage of this. For the small consultancies wishing to offer international services, the main method adopted is to enter or establish an international network. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and European Research Press Ltd.

This article sets out to critically evaluate the impact that higher education institution (HEI)‐based consultancy can have upon the adoption and use of e‐commerce by businesses units operating in the small business sector of the British economy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that “new” (post‐1992) universities are more likely to offer consultancy services to small businesses. It is also claimed that owner/managers seem reluctant to pay full economic prices and would only subscribe to HEI‐based consultancy services if and when these are supported by considerable subsidies. In order to test the owner/manager reluctance hypothesis, 60 matched case studies were conducted, involving small businesses based in the West Midlands region of Great Britain. Preliminary results indicate that most small business owner/managers are aware of the potential benefits accruing from ICT and e‐commerce and tend to use HEI‐based consultancy services as a subsidised access point to e‐markets, involving both their core and peripheral activities. There exists, however, an apparent mismatch between the supply and demand sides of the HEI‐based ICT and e‐commerce consultancy market.

The environmental consultancy market is, by any measure, expanding. Yet, what does the future hold for those entering the market? In essence the market will be split between three types of organizations: large environmental consultancies; niche players; and low‐cost providers of environmental services. Initial advantage will go to those firms offering services relating to energy efficiency and waste minimization. In the long term, however, advantage will go to those consultancies which are willing to use an active and involved approach with their customers, and at a lower margin than they may take now.

In this chapter we show how consultancy activities are essential in the learning processes of academic start-ups. Drawing on opportunity identification literature, prior experience and experiential learning, we develop a better understanding of the contribution of consultancy activities to manufacturing-oriented academic spin-offs. Two cases are investigated which show that, often undervalued, consultancy activities were central to the learning process of academic spin-offs and directly contributed to the identification of the entrepreneurial opportunity. We conclude with a consideration of the theoretical and managerial implications.

This paper examines the arrangements made for innovation, research and development in professional service firms, particularly management and public relations consultancies. The paper compares arrangements made in management and public relations consultancies, drawing on the experience of international management consultancies and public relations consultancies in the UK. The paper outlines some of the principles by which the processes of innovation, research and development are managed in professional service firms, and draws conclusions relating to practice development in public relations.

This study aims to examine how embeddedness influences consultants' information seeking when making decisions within a social network of relationships, and how these social networks evolve throughout the project delivery stages. The study is grounded in social network theory and examines embeddedness from three perspectives: structural (network cohesion), relational (tie strength in terms of friendship and knowledge awareness) and actor prominence.

A social network analysis (SNA) questionnaire was administered to a team of consultants working on a management consultancy project in Shanghai, China. The SNA measures of density, degree centrality and betweenness centrality were used to analyse relationship patterns among project team members, permitting comparison between the networks. Networks were also compared across the three project delivery stages of collect, consider and create.

Structural embeddedness was observed in the active information seeking behaviour among consultancy team members. The moderate network density of the self-organising information seeking networks across the project delivery stages ensures that the team remains connected but avoids information redundancy and overload. Relational embeddedness was evident through the multiplexity of ties among team members with overlapping friendship and information seeking relationships. The knowledge awareness network's sparseness indicates a team of autonomous knowledge workers with distributed expertise. Project managers were the most prominent actors across the three project delivery stages, underlining these actors' relational leadership role.

The study provides a deeper understanding of collaborative decision-making behaviours in dynamic-project environments. Limited attempts have been made to visualise and analyse the relationships involved in small consulting teams. The novelty of the network approach adopted stems from its ability to offer a structural view of the relationship among consultants, thus offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

The study validates the social network theory of embeddedness in a real-world collaborative decision-making setting and provides a deeper understanding of information seeking behaviours for decision-making in dynamic-project environments. From a project management process viewpoint, the evolving nature of the information seeking network as it changes across the project stages with associated actors' roles was also visualised graphically, offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.