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Cross‐border mergers are rising in number and scope even though, on average, firms do not profi t from them. In this article, we use interviews and secondary data to assess a historic merger between two global consulting giants ‐ Cap Gemini and Ernst & Young Consulting. The two fi rms had well‐articulated strategic reasons for merging. Nevertheless, their integration strategy failed to address key differences in business models, core competencies, and organizational practices. As a result, the combined firm suffered five years of diminished financial and competitive performance. Our study highlights the organizational complexities affecting mergers between human capital‐intensive firms.

This chapter focuses on the circumstances under which active clients in universities construct external management consultants as actors. Much research focuses on how consultants legitimize decisions and trends in business organizations, but we know little about how consultants become legitimized as actors in other organizational fields. In the academic field, clients are embedded in a variety of organizational settings embedded in different institutional logics, which determine their sense making. By analyzing how consultants are legitimized, the authors contribute to a better understanding of the organizational preconditions that support the construction of an external expert as an actor. By focusing on IT and strategy consulting in academia, further, the authors discuss the role of competing institutional logics in legitimization processes and the importance of intra-organizational communities.

At the pinnacle of the knowledge management hype, international consulting firms were widely viewed as the undisputed champions of the discipline. They were the ones that pioneered the development of innovative knowledge management systems, they were at the forefront of creating knowledge management cultures and they recognized the productive potential of knowledge workers. While knowledge continues to be prominent on the strategic agenda of leading consulting firms, several knowledge management challenges remain unsolved. To shed light on this matter the paper aims to investigate how knowledge management is really embedded in their organizations and with which critical issues these firms still struggle .

The paper presents a qualitative empirical study based on 37 in‐depth interviews with representatives from international consulting firms in different locations around the world.

It is found that the promise of knowledge management can only be realized if people are open to changing business processes and adopt new ways of thinking.

The study sheds fresh light on the knowledge management practices that have emerged in the consulting industry, and provides insights into the interplay of people and systems, the structuring of knowledge management, the divide between knowledge generalists and specialists, and the knowledge management strategy.

The paper presents a general approach to embedding knowledge management along the dimensions of people, systems and business processes and develops an integrative framework that links knowledge management strategies to a typical consulting project cycle. In addition, it sheds light on individual perceptions on the benefits from knowledge management.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the procurement process of consulting services within the public sector and to benchmark the obtained results with practices in the private sector.

A two‐stage research design has been used. First, in‐depth personal interviews were conducted with six users of consulting services. The second stage involved a cross‐sectional survey of purchasers of a broad range of business advisory services. This included private as well as public purchasers.

It was found that the procurement process of consulting services in the public sector differs significantly from that of private companies. Further analyses indicate that purchasers from public and private organizations are equally satisfied with the results of consulting services.

The results of the study indicate that public sector organizations may need to develop new buying skills in market management, specification, competitive process, negotiation regulation and monitoring.

The paper suggests that a more high‐level management involvement is needed, recognizing the importance of the procurement function within the public sector and supporting highly trained staff in implementing strategic procurement initiatives.

The study provides unique insights on how consulting services are purchased in the public sector as well as in the private sector. Furthermore, the paper illustrates which purchase practices explain the satisfaction level of purchasers of consulting services.

The management of multiple organizational identities is an important issue in contemporary organizations. However, relatively few researchers have examined how organizations and their leaders control or cope with this ambiguity. This paper contributes with an empirical description of a Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO’s) efforts to handle multiple identities. It is based on a case study of a corporate consulting unit with dual organizational identities – a staff identity and an external consultant identity. The paper shows that the CEO’s rhetoric focuses on creating an identity hierarchy, highlighting the identity of external consultant. The distinctiveness of this identity, in comparison to the parent organization, is emphasized by using the IT consulting industry as a prototype for the self‐categorization of Telco Consulting. In combination with the secondary staff identity, a loosely coupled relation to the parent organization is constructed. One conclusion that may be drawn from the study is that the two identities emerge in part through the effects of internal contrasting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that lead to consulting success in the enterprise software environment and thereby develop a refined consulting services maturity (CSM) model which includes prioritised best practices grouped under eight key focus areas (KFAs).

The research is conducted among Tier‐1 enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors using interviews, focus group sessions, and a web survey. Based on the findings of the survey, the CSM model is improved, refined, and ultimately ratified by a number of experienced ERP sector practitioners.

The fundamental basis of the CSM model is that an enterprise software company will be able to improve the maturity level of its consulting services operations by focusing on certain key areas and adopting prioritised best practices in each of the key areas. These key areas include leadership, values, consulting skills, consulting success factors, adaptability, project management practices, profitability, and customer focus. The level of maturity of the organisation increases as best practices are implemented and continuously refined.

The outcome is a blueprint for best practice consulting services for companies operating in the ERP software environment that can be adopted for very little cost. When implemented, the CSM model readily helps a company improve the performance of its consulting services business.

Business performance is enhanced by selecting KFAs, including their associated best practices, and then targeting these for improvement. As further best practices are implemented and refined, the maturity level of the consulting practice increases. This model can easily be adopted by any consulting services company and with the necessary focus, it should lead to a dramatic improvement of most dimensions of a consulting practice.

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.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the marketing and communication activities carried out by small management consulting firms and how they relate to customers.

After the framing of the literature on the subject, the study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire. The sample under investigation is represented by 914 small consulting firms located in central Italy.

Results show that half of the sample carried out marketing and communication activities, mainly through the website and social media, while others participating in events as speakers at conferences. It also emerges that management consulting firms carry out activities aimed at maintaining relationship with customers even if they do not invest time in market research in order to find potential and new clients.

The study suggests that management consulting firms should adopt a systematic and strategic approach to communication and should develop a complete and integrated digital communication strategy, as well as to rethink the consulting business model.

There are no previous studies that provide insight into the everyday practice of marketing and communication of small management consulting services in today's dynamic and changing economic environment.

Although the market for communication consultancies has been booming worldwide for many years now, there are still only a handful of theoretical concepts and empirical findings pertaining to communication consulting. This is the fundamental starting point for this paper, which sets out to answer the following research questions: What is the function of communication consulting? What are the differences between consultants' expectations of consulting and those of clients? How do consultants and clients deal with the contradiction between proximity and distance? What are the potential threats to the autonomy of consulting?

The paper combines a theoretical framework of communication consulting with a survey of German communication consultants and clients.

First, a theoretical framework is developed in which communication consulting is defined as follows: First, it opens up decision-related contingency and thus produces additional options for managing communicative relationships with internal and external target groups, before helping to close decision-related contingency. The results of the survey show that the expectations of clients and consultants for communication consulting are largely similar. In the closing dimension especially, most clients share the active role of self-conception of most consultants. On the other hand, in some opening activities, clients wish for more critical, independent and courageous consulting.

The scope of the empirical material is limited to communication consultants and clients in Germany and may therefore not be valid in other cultural contexts.

The paper closes a gap in both theory building and empirical research in communication consulting. The theory presented conceives of communication consulting as a hybrid of management consulting and process consulting and, in addition to the opening dimension, also takes the closing dimension of consulting into consideration for the first time. The study reveals a certain schizophrenia in clients: on the one hand, clients demand more critical consultants and thus call for more distance; on the other hand, clients prefer to be close to their consultants, particularly if they wish to work with them for the long-term.

To propose a framework with which to study the efficacy of strategic alliances of small firms in knowledge industries, with an emphasis on research design to examine the issues surrounding the phenomena.

A framework is developed that consists of four constructs, namely conditions, roles and contributions, learning, and efficacy. Details of the constructs are explained.

Management consulting industry proves to be a fertile research ground to study strategic alliances with regard to firm size. Through an illustration, it is shown that the proposed framework can be put into practice to investigate relevant research questions.

The framework has limited generalizability to situations where the clients of the knowledge‐intensive service are not clearly defined up front.

Knowledge industries will benefit from developing taxonomy of expertise. Client firms may benefit from encouraging small firm to form strategic alliances.

The contribution is threefold; identification of the interplay of firm size and the practice of alliance formation in knowledge industries as a viable research topic; a framework with which to examine the efficacy of strategic alliances of small firms in knowledge industries; and proposing to expand the knowledge management research beyond intra‐firm learning.