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The purpose of this paper is to discuss experiential education as a way to develop future consultants in human resource management and marketing with the goal of developing consulting competence.

This is a conceptual paper that proposes, outlines, and discusses a model, containing 11 dimensions of consulting competence.

The conceptual model includes 11 building blocks: foreign language competence, non-verbal competence, perception of cultural distance, cultural self-awareness, knowledge, skills, motivation, effectiveness, appropriateness, contextual interaction patterns, and affinity. Considerations for each of these elements are introduced and discussed.

This model and the explanation of its components should guide management and marketing educators in their efforts to build and develop experiential education programs of excellence.

The model proposed and outline in this paper will assist institutions of higher education and faculty members to guide students in their development of a successful career in consulting.

A common way for academic libraries to support student success is through partnership with writing centers. Practices such as applying service design thinking to develop and inform integrated library and writing center services can lead to a student-focused space. This chapter outlines how service design, studio pedagogy, and peer learning informed the setup and ongoing services in The Undergrad Research and Writing Studio (URWS or, the Studio), a shared space in the Oregon State University Libraries. The URWS model is grounded in studio pedagogy, which employs a “propose-critique-iterate” approach to student writing development (Brocato, 2009). Research and writing consultants assist student writers when they have a question, mirroring libraries’ point of need service approach. Librarians and studio faculty collaborated on the training curriculum, which emphasizes how research and writing are intertwined processes. Peer consultant reflection and assessment inform the ongoing development of the overarching program, service, space, and training, ensuring alignment with the ethos of centering students and their learning.

The study aims to explore collaborations between writing centers and libraries which create opportunities for providing information literacy intervention for students doing researched writing. This case study gathered data from writing center logs to uncover if and how information literacy activity was occurring during consultations.

A representative sample of writing center logs recorded between September of 2013 and May 2014 was mined for frequencies of library and information literacy terms. Transaction logs were coded and analyzed according to the frames in the Association of College and Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

Information literacy is discussed in only 13 per cent of consultations. Referrals to librarians accounted for less than 1 per cent of all transactions. Students most commonly asked for assistance in formatting citations, but deeper information literacy conversations did occur that provide opportunities for engagement with the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

Transactions were examined from one university. Although findings cannot be generalized, the results were applicable to local services, and this study provides a model useful for libraries and writing centers.

This study provides ample direction for future collaborations that will take advantage of the intersections of information literacy and writing instruction to improve student research skills.

Although much has been written about partnerships between libraries and writing centers, this study uniquely demonstrates a model for data sharing across institutional boundaries and how one library mined existing data from a writing center.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present perceptions and valuations of research skills that members of one student consulting group reported based on their coursework and participation in experiential consulting projects.

In interviews conducted in Fall 2009, students were asked to describe the research skills they acquired through their participation in experiential consulting projects and, for comparison, the research skills they acquired through their course assignments. The students' responses were placed into categories based on the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) information literacy competency standards for higher education, where applicable. Other categories were created to address responses that did not correspond to the ACRL standards. Categories with the highest overall number of occurrences, representing recurring themes in the responses, were analyzed.

The students identified research skills that they believed would be important in their future professions and everyday lives. However, these were generally not the same skills that the students mentioned developing through their experiential consulting projects and their courses, presenting a disconnect that requires further examination. Some of the research skills mentioned correspond to ACRL Standards, while others represent the students' own interpretations of what research skills are, revealing opportunities to instruct students in more effectively articulating transferable research skills.

This is the first study to focus on student consultants' perceptions of research and the value they place on the research skills they develop. Insights gained have influenced instruction efforts to the group under study, as well as provided starting points for future investigations.

The purpose of this paper is to present the methodology and results of practice-based learning in the Business School of a higher education institution (HEI) in Mexico, with a focus on students’ participation and learning experience.

This research is a descriptive and qualitative analysis of six team experiences within a larger project developed through university–business partnership with the aim of helping develop organizational capabilities of small and medium enterprises within the Tequila industry in Mexico.

Participation of students in project-based learning, in genuine scenarios alongside professional consultants, is an effective way to develop learning and to apply prior knowledge. Learning occurs at several levels, including developing professional knowledge, teamwork, leadership and communication skills, and to some extent consulting skills. Client organizations also develop learning in work-based learning (WBL) projects.

The research methodology does not allow for generalization of the results on a large scale.

This research shows a successful instance of project- and practice-based learning that may be helpful for HEIs seeking to implement this learning methodology.

There is research evidence that more students are expecting to get practice-based skills as part of their higher education training. This paper supports the argument that HEIs can develop wide scale WBL programs that have impact on students’ learning and skills development as well as on the development of host organizations.

The instance of WBL described in this research paper is unique within HEIs in Mexico.

This article is the first of two which examine the difficulties experienced by the unqualified researcher or student who may be called upon to act as consultant in conventional or action‐research project work. The first article addresses the problems of entry; the second looks at the production of a credible and acceptable report. The thesis of both papers is that conceptual frameworks currently offered as an aid to understanding the consultancy process have concentrated on psychological and processual aspects of consultancy at the expense of the cultural. A social anthropological perspective, it is argued, can offer richer interpretations in areas where current theory is infertile. This first article addresses some of the problems of the student consultant in gaining entry and establishing a contractual basis for his activities. It begins with an examination of the cultural clashes between social scientists and managers, using current published research as examples, emphasising the effect of each on the other and the potential risk or threat involved for each. The consequences of attempts to control this work in an imbalanced situation are raised by the examination of a part of a consultancy project completed by the author, presented as a case example. The subsequent discussion of the case uses the concept of the consultant as sorcerer, allied to the dimension of apprenticeship, to analyse the case as a form of initiation rite. The conclusions drawn suggest that the content of consultancy, and even the dimensions of individual processes, may well be subordinate to the importance of “public opinion” in sustaining it as an activity. The second article will further examine this suggestion through the case example of the production of a consultancy report.