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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.

The resources and mechanisms required to complete a value proposition are generally considered as crucial aspects in designing a company business model. However, research in the third party logistics (3PL) arena concerned with studying how 3PL providers define their value creation architecture to meet different shippers’ requirements has so far been inadequate. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap, providing a detailed investigation on how the 3PL providers’ capabilities and logistics expertise can add value to their shippers’ processes.

A qualitative exploratory research was conducted involving, first, a systematic combining process to understand the main factors and operational strategies whereby 3PL providers can create value and build a comprehensive framework of their value creation architecture. Second, a qualitative survey was conducted on 44 leading 3PL providers operating in Italy to understand how these providers can organise themselves to create value for shippers.

The 3PL providers’ value creation architecture is presented within a clear and comprehensive framework, together with 30 potential operational strategies that can be used by 3PL providers and the related factors that enable value to be created for shippers. Three main value creation models (volume-oriented 3PL providers, process-oriented 3PL providers and innovation-oriented 3PL providers) are identified. The importance of the different factors enabling value creation is highlighted for each model, identifying the distinctive operational strategies and those adopted most frequently.

From a managerial perspective, 3PL providers will find these results useful for developing suitable strategies to compete on the market. From their side, shippers can understand and evaluate how 3PL providers are able to offer value to their logistics processes, allowing them to select the logistics partner who best fits their needs.

The present paper fulfils the identified need of examining the 3PL providers’ business model in detail. A set of distinct value creation models is identified and thoroughly investigated to reveal the different competitive advantages available to shippers.

The consulting industry is facing an inflection point as it shifts to being more populated by publicly traded entities than by private firms. Associated career patterns are affected in ways that have not yet been explored.

In this paper we describe the industry shift to public ownership and resulting changes in consulting careers from a psychological contract perspective. We conclude by discussing the impact of emerging career dynamics that could impact the future effectiveness of the consulting industry.

There are dramatic transitions underway regarding career dynamics of professionals in major consultancies. We foresee a troublesome picture in some respects and a promising outlook in other respects for individuals and their firms in the consulting profession.

Aspiring consultants will find this paper informative as a way to assess fit with career models offered by consulting firms. Firms can use points in the paper to understand their potential shortcomings associated with their current and evolving career models to manage career transitions and negative consequences.

This conceptual paper draws attention to the potentially negative consequences of inappropriate career models for consultancies in general, and with different firm strategies. It is a first look at career changes in consulting due to the drastic shift of the industry to public entities.

Examines the characteristics and structure of executive recruitment consultancies in France. Search consultants recruit through “head‐hunting” while selection consultants recruit through advertising. These consultancies play an important part in the market for executive recruitment. The nature of the product has implications for the behaviour of the consultancies and the structure of the industry. There is little or no price competition in the market; instead there is a reliance on non‐traditional non‐price competition. There are two factors which have affected the industry: the recession, which has led to changes in the focus and role of the consultancies; and the creation of the Single European Market, which has led to the increasing internationalization of business.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the barriers and enablers to lean implementation as part of an imaging quality improvement programme from a socio-cultural perspective.

An in-depth 33 month ethnographic study, using observation and qualitative interviews, examined the process of lean implementation as part of an improvement programme.

Implementation of lean was more successful compared with other reports of lean in healthcare settings. Key enablers of lean were high levels of multidisciplinary staff involvement and engagement; the professional credibility of facilitators and clinicians as early adopters, all within a wider culture of relatively strong inter-professional relationships in the imaging department. These enablers combined with the more routinised and standardised nature of imaging pathways compared to some other acute specialties suggest that imaging is fertile ground for lean, linked to the manufacturing origins of lean.

When introducing lean within healthcare settings, special attention needs to be paid to the specific healthcare context and the existing cultures of inter-professional relationships. Fostering an improvement culture and engagement with training, together with adequate financial resource, are a key to contributing to the level of acceptability of an improvement tool such as lean.

This ethnographic study, bringing together rich multi-source data, has provided a detailed insight into the cultural workings of the process of lean implementation within a complex healthcare system.

Although politicians are desperate for innovation, few are brave enough to talk about how difficult it is to shift people away from predictable patterns of behaving and from conforming cultures. There is a tendency in national government to think radical and act conservative. The Labour government, in its modernisation policies, appears to be genuine in its desire for social inclusion and real change, but the thinking about how to persuade people to engage with this process is ill thought out. The conventional modes of delivering legislation, programmes and partnerships too often ignore the need to involve staff and communities. Modernisation and change are dependent on new forms of people‐management. The report draws on MBS Change Centre audit and consultancy within local partnerships including the Health Action Zones and on research funded by the ESRC Management Innovation Programme. Concludes that the improvement process will only succeed if government’s incentives and managerial frameworks sustain people‐relationships in communities and in public sector organisations. Concludes also that there is a lack of leadership and “know‐how” in the public sector about how to achieve transformation and that policy makers need to focus on managing the transformation process.

This paper describes the author's views on current and future trends in the relationship between public relations consultancies and their clients. A number of such trends are identified including longer‐term contracts, the growth of international assignments, more demanding clients and strategic consultancies.

There is a paucity of information on the development and practice of consultancy. This paper seeks to fill in some of the gaps in knowledge particularly in relation to the nature of consultancy, market opportunities management and practice development. The paper commences with a discussion on the role of the consultant and moves on to examine why organisations use consultants. Thereafter attention is devoted to the market opportunities and discusses how business is developed. Reference is made to a number of writers and their views are integrated into the discussions, particularly where they cite reasons as to how business was obtained. A model which originated in the USA is developed in relation to the management of assignments and a claim is made as to essential “task processes”. In conclusion, recommendations are made as to practice development strategy and a five‐stage model, developed by the authors, is suggested.

Based on firms’ need to remain competitive and dynamic in a scenario of constant change, the purpose of this paper is to compare the actors involved in cooperation for innovation between Brazilian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms (LFs), and also in two industries/sectors, manufacturing and services.

To achieve this objective, the database chosen was PINTEC, with data available from 1998 to 2014. The statistical analyses performed were binary logistic regression, descriptive statistics of the variables, correlation matrix and the difference of means.

The empirical evidence show that the firm’s characteristics (SME or LF) favour the use of one type of cooperation for innovation or another, highlighting SMEs’ proximity to their clients and LFs’ structures, tending to belong to business groups and having links to training centres and technical assistance networks.

The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the evidence that types of cooperation for innovation can vary according to firm size and the type of industry/sector, and the practical contribution lies in pointing out the importance of clients for SMEs, and for LFs the importance of business groups, technical assistance and professional training centres. The importance of suppliers in cooperation for innovation stands out in the service sector, and that of clients in the manufacturing sector.

This study shows that the types of cooperation to innovation can vary according to firm size and type of sector, in an emerging market and with low rates of innovation. It is emphasized that most research on the subject has been carried out in developed countries or emerging Asian ones. Therefore, this study is innovative because it shows particularities of the Brazilian market that can subsequently be observed in other emerging markets.

The first of two studies concerned with the design and implementation of staff appraisal schemes. It is based on research material gathered while working on consultancy projects, designing and implementing appraisal, in five different organizations. A classification scheme is developed which can be used to describe the differences between the schemes in the five organizations, and by extension the differences between any appraisal schemes. This classification uses a basic distinction between purpose of appraisal and design features, and it is used to describe in detail the schemes implemented in two of the organizations. It is therefore preliminary to the second study in which an attempt is made to conceptualize and interpret the differences between the schemes.