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Tyrimo objektas – socialinių konsultavimo paslaugų kokybė. Tyrimo tikslas – nustatyti Prienų rajono savivaldybės administracijos Socialinės paramos skyriaus konsultavimo paslaugų kokybę ir pateikti šių paslaugų kokybės tobulinimo kryptis ir priemones. Tyrimo uždaviniai: 1. Išanalizuoti socialinių konsultavimo paslaugų kokybės teorinius aspektus. 2. Nustatyti konsultavimo paslaugų kokybės vertinimo kriterijus. 3. Įvertinti Prienų rajono savivaldybės administracijos Socialinės paramos skyriaus konsultavimo paslaugų kokybę. 4. Numatyti Prienų rajono savivaldybės administracijos Socialinės paramos skyriaus konsultavimo paslaugų kokybės gerinimo galimybes. Tyrimo laikotarpis: 2003 m. – 2008 m. Tyrimo metodai: mokslinės literatūros, įstatymų ir dokumentų, periodinių mokslinių straipsnių, elektroninių informacijos šaltinių analizė, anketinė apklausa, interviu, sintezė, loginė analizė, statistinė duomenų analizė, grafinis vaizdavimas. Pirmoje darbo dalyje yra analizuojama socialinių konsultavimo paslaugų bei paslaugų kokybės samprata, apžvelgiami kokybės tyrimo modeliai, pateikiami konsultavimo paslaugų kokybės vertinimo kriterijai. Antra darbo dalis skirta įvertinti Prienų rajono savivaldybės administracijos Socialinės paramos skyriaus konsultavimo paslaugų kokybę. Ji vertinama naudojant Ch. Gronroos bendrai suvoktos kokybės modelį ir įtraukiant A. Parasuraman, L. Berry ir V. Zeithaml pateiktos Servqual metodikos vertinimo kriterijus. Trečioje darbo dalyje suformuluotos Prienų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Research object – quality of social consultation services. Research aim - to determine the quality of social consulting services in Prienai district municipality administration and to present their improvement trends and means. Research tasks: 1. To analyze theoretical aspects of social consulting services` quality. 2. To determine quality research criteria of social consulting services. 3. To evaluate the quality of social consulting services in Social security division of Prienai district municipality administration. 4. To foresee improvement opportunities of social consulting services` quality in Social security division of Prienai district municipality administration. Time of exploration: 2003 – 2008 year. Research methods: analysis and synthesis of scientific literature, laws and documents, periodical articles, electronic information sources, questionnaire survey, semi-structured interview, logical analysis, analysis of statistical data, graphical modeling. In the first part of the work is analyzed conception of the quality of social consultation services, reviewed the quality‘s investigative models, introduced quality research criteria of social consulting services. The second part of final paper is bestowed to evaluate the quality of social consulting services in Social security division of Prienai district municipality administration. It is evaluated by using Ch. Gronroo’s model of common realized quality, involving evaluative criteria by A. Parasuraman’s, L... [to full text]

This diploma thesis deals with the evaluation of potential of consulting services in outgoing tourism. Based on several key research revealed that in the Czech Republic there is no specialized travel agency focused on consulting services. Demand for these services is quite high, people miss the personal approach and the opportunity to consult their holidays with a travel consultant. The solution could be to create a new travel agency ČambiTour with focuse on consulting services. Providing of these services, however, must be free of charge - Czechs have not been prepared to pay for these services yet. The main part of this thesis is focused on the establishment and development of new travel agency ČambiTour. Specifically, there is a business plan, marketing strategy and possible business risks analysis. There is also research of client satisfaction, SWOT analysis and possible options for future development of the company.

Forecast of the period 2005-2008 demand ezpension agricultural consulting of this kind: accountancy record, planning and coordinating project of businnes, innovation and streamline consultations. At work ready samply of the development of the consulting services within agricultural sector.

I examine factors influencing accounting firms' and their clients' decisions to pursue an auditing vs. consulting relationship. I employ the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) prohibition on providing both services to the same clients as a natural experiment. Because Deloitte & Touche was the only Big 4 firm to retain its consulting division post-SOX, I compare Deloitte's client switch and retention decisions to those made by its direct competitors. In this context, I investigate how the decision to continue or terminate an audit relationship is influenced by auditor industry specialization, the historical provision of auditor-provided consulting services and the likelihood that the client will require consulting services in the future. I find that there is a preference for auditing when the auditor is a specialist in the client's industry, and there is a preference for consulting when the auditor provided consulting services in the past and the client is likely to require consulting services in the future. I also report empirical evidence on audit effectiveness and efficiency in cases where the auditor and its client discontinued the audit in order to maintain a consulting relationship. Although there was no impact on audit effectiveness, the auditor switches reduced efficiency as evidenced by significantly higher audit fees. This study is relevant to the current audit environment because public accounting firms that spun-off their consulting divisions around the enactment of SOX are in the process of rebuilding their consulting practices and must now choose between providing audit and consulting services to their clients. It may also be pertinent to European policy makers who are currently considering a proposal to limit auditors' ability to jointly offer audit and consulting services to the same client.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore if organizational affiliation as a private and public organization influences the motives behind utilizing management consulting. Our topic, management consulting, has been widely discussed both in academic and non-academic settings and the client perspective in management consulting have to some extent received academic attention. We found it interesting to explore the client perspective through a lens about the effect organizational affiliation has on organization's motives on utilizing management consulting. Methodology: This study has a qualitative research method with an inductive research approach. Our data collection was conducted through interviews with participants from both the public and the private sector that was involved in purchasing management consultants in their organizations. We analyzed our empirical material with a qualitative content analysis that help us code and develop categories in our material. Findings: The findings in our study implicates that motives behind utilizing management consultants differ between public and private sector in how they perceive management consulting and what their expectations on the consultant are. Through our empirical material and data analysis we have been able to detect differences in how the private and public sector perceives management consulting and influencing factors, which in turn affects the motives for purchasing management consulting services in the organization.

ABC Consulting Services is a Consulting Engineering firm based in Pietermaritzburg. Primary and secondary research was conducted in an attempt to identify the key marketing issues that ABC Consulting Services faces in its internal and external environments. The primary research done on the company (micro factors) and its environment (macro factors) was in the form of qualitative descriptive research with the source of information coming from internal semi structured focus groups and questionnaires sent to selected individuals involved in the consulting engineering industry. The secondary research includes a study of the current state of the South African Consulting Engineering industry. The content analysis of the primary and secondary research resulted in the identification of six key threats in the macro environment and five main opportunities for the company to increase its current work. The key threats identified are the lack of engineering skills, the lack of skills in the client organisations, inexperienced firms in the market, tendering processes and slow payment from clients. With further unpacking of these issues, it was found that many of the issues are as a result of the lack of skills in client organisations. The opportunities identified include agricultural development for historically disadvantaged individuals, the relatively low value of the Rand making the company's services cheaper for internationally funded projects, increased infrastructure budgets as a result of the 2010 Soccer WorId Cup, agricultural development in Africa and an increase in floodline determination work. The internal resource analysis identified that that the company is very strong in terms of the quality of its human resources; however, it is under staffed for the current work load. Financially, the company is in a good position and the current environment should continue to yield very good returns in the short to medium term, however, the firm is inflexible in terms of financial commitments. The firms lack of formal marketing systems and their low client and contact bases in Government departments were identified as weaknesses. The company's facilities and processes are good and represent a strength, however there are some procedures such as quality management systems which need to be implemented. It is recommended that the company institute formal marketing procedures and market themselves to prospective clients by means of networking and doing presentations to selected prospective clients in order to inform them of the service that the company has to offer. The company should also do limited advertising in selected specialist magazines which deal with irrigation and the sugar industry. In order to establish themselves as leaders in sugarcane estate development, they should write and present papers at the annual SASTA conferences. To promote the profession, they should do presentations at high school level to encourage high school students to study engineering and at a University level; the company should offer their services to the local University for lecturing certain modules of suitable courses. This can be used as a platform for promoting the profession to the students to encourage them to stick to engineering as a career. To solve the staff shortage problem, the company should recruit two new engineers, one with approximately 3 years relevant experience and another with approximately 5 years relevant experience. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

Purpose: Our purpose is to investigate if the documentation of an internalaudit department at banks reflects a shift towards more consultingactivities, and how this potential change in the internal audit doc-umentation can be explained. Background: Previous research indicates that internal audit has developed fromits traditional assurance activities to include more consulting ac-tivities such as risk management assistance and corporate govern-ance support. Some researches argue that this development canhave a negative impact on internal auditor independence. Howev-er, there is a lack of research in this area using documentation andcontent analysis of internal audit reports. Method: In this study, we have done qualitative content analysis of internaldocuments collected from the period 2004-2013. These docu-ments are analyzed using a coding scheme based on previous re-search. Conclusion: By qualitatively analysing the activities reported we find that thedocumentation reflects a shift, over time, towards more activitiesthat we classified as consulting. We argue that this can mainly beexplained by coercive and normative isomorphism; for example,regulatory pressures and influences from the Institute of InternalAuditors. We also argue that internal auditing might benefit froma more consistent view of the role.

The aim of this masters thesis is to create a customized visualization web application of consulting services statistics. This to allow users to get an overview of time management through clear visual links between developers, customers and tasks. The design of the application is based on literature in usability and information visualization as well as a usability test. This thesis work resulted in a JavaScript based web application using the web framework CakePHP which follows a model-view-controller architectural pattern with visualization components implemented in Javascript.

Bakgrund: På samma sätt som fordonsindustrin uppfyller kundens behov medhjälp av ett kundanpassat utbud bestående av standardiserade moduler, finnsdet intresse hos konsultbolag att använda modularitet för att standardisera ochkundanpassa tjänster. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att utforska fördelar, nackdelar och risker med attanvända tjänstemodularitet för konsulttjänster från både kundens ochleverantörens perspektiv, samt undersöka vilka konsekvenser tjänstemodularitetkan medföra. Metod: En explorativ fallstudie genomfördes och med teoretisk tematisk analysidentifierades fördelar, nackdelar och risker med att använda tjänstemodularitetför konsulttjänster. Vidare analys gjordes för att undersöka vilka konsekvensertjänstemodularitet medför. Datainsamlingen har bestått av primärdata frånintervjuer och sekundärdata från observationer och dokument. Resultat: Studien resulterade i två teman, sex subteman och 25 koder. Studienpåvisar flertalet fördelar, nackdelar och risker med tjänstemodularitet förkonsulttjänster, från både kundens och leverantörens perspektiv. Fördelar,nackdelar och risker vägdes samman för att beskriva konsekvenser somtjänstemodularitet medför. Slutsats: Studiens slutsats är att tjänstemodularitet kan bli ett effektivt sätt attkombinera kundanpassning och standardisering, förutsatt att funna nackdelaroch risker hanteras. De nackdelar och risker är i många fall kopplade direkt ellerindirekt till de funna fördelarna och utmaningarna som nackdelar och riskermedför kan leda till fördelar om dom hanteras rätt. Originalitet: Studien bidrar med ökad förståelse kring tjänstemodularitet förkonsulttjänster. Detta genom att belysa nackdelar och risker medtjänstemodularitet ur både kunds- och leverantörsperspektiv. / Background: In the same way that the automotive industry meets thecustomer's needs with the help of a customized range consisting of standardizedmodules, there is an interest in consulting companies to use modularity tostandardize and customize services. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explore the advantages, disadvantages,and risks of using service modularity for consulting services from both thecustomer's and the supplier's perspective, and to investigate the consequencesof service modularity. Methodology: An exploratory case study was conducted and with theoreticalthematic analysis the advantages, disadvantages, and risks of using servicemodularity for consulting services were identified. Further analysis wasperformed to investigate the consequences of service modularity. The datacollection consisted of primary data from interviews and secondary data fromobservations and documents. Result: The study resulted in two themes, six subthemes, and 25 codes. Thestudy reveals several advantages, disadvantages, and risks of service modularityfor consulting services, from both the customer's and the supplier's perspective.Advantages, disadvantages, and risks were weighed together to describe theconsequences of service modularity. Conclusion: The study concludes that service modularity can be an effectiveway to combine customer customization and standardization if disadvantagesand risks are addressed. The disadvantages and risks are in many cases linkeddirectly or indirectly to the advantages found and the challenges thatdisadvantages and risks entail can lead to advantages if they are handledcorrectly. Originality: The study contributes to an increased understanding of servicemodularity for consulting services. This is done by highlighting disadvantagesand risks with service modularity from both a customer and supplierperspective.