published_or_final_version / abstract / Civil Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Geography / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

<p>The management consultancy, a 14 billion EUR industry in Europe, has become an attractive market in the last couple of years. The Swedish market is blooming with an economic growth of a staggering 20 % according to analysts at Konsultguiden. The attractiveness of the market has brought many foreign players into the field such as Celerant. Celerant is a UK-based company earning a total of $145 million in 2006 with about 650 employees around Europe and the USA. Their focus is mainly within operational management. A few years ago, Celerant decided to expand in to the Nordic region consisting of Denmark, Norway and Sweden and has just recently started to focus a bit extra on the Swedish market. Using Porter’s model of Five Forces we look at the Swedish management consulting industry to see what factors to consider focusing on when entering the market. Through an analysis of the current management consulting market, we compare it to Celerant’s strategy for entering the Swedish market to see if our analysis differs or is similar to the consultancy’s actual strategy. This gives us a picture of how the management consultancies perceive the market and how they act accordingly. The results show similarities with two factors: the consultants and the clients. These seem to be the main factors to focus on as a management consultancy entering the Swedish market. There seems to be a current shortage of competent consultants on the Swedish market and therefore a necessity to focus on recruitment. Clients are what make business for consultancies and business connections need to be established before entering the market. However, we found that more precaution should be taken for factors such as substitutes and new entrants as well. There is a constant change of trends in the management consultancy industry and needs to be considered in order to stay competitive on the market, since a management consultancy needs to be able to offer what the clients demand.</p>

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.

by James Chi-wang Lau, David Sai-shing Lu. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1982. / Bibliography: leaf 52.

by Mak Tsz Yee. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.v / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Objective --- p.1 / The Engineering Consulting Business --- p.1 / Review of Literature --- p.3 / "Value-Creation, Resources and Capabilities" --- p.4 / Cost vs. Differentiation Advantage --- p.4 / Scope of Target Market --- p.5 / Isolating Mechanisms --- p.6 / Resources and Capabilities --- p.6 / Evolutionary Economics and Dynamic Competition --- p.8 / Scope of this Study --- p.9 / Chapter II. --- GENERAL ENVIRONMENT --- p.10 / Global Segment --- p.10 / Demographic Segment --- p.11 / Economic Segment --- p.11 / Office Properties --- p.11 / Residential Properties --- p.13 / Political Segment --- p.14 / Technological Segment --- p.15 / Concluding Observation of the General Environment --- p.15 / Chapter III. --- INDUSTRY ENVIRONMENT --- p.17 / Construction Industry --- p.17 / Consultancy Arrangement --- p.19 / Normal Scope of Services --- p.20 / Hong Kong Real Estate Property Market --- p.20 / Analysis of Industry Environment --- p.25 / Threat of Entry --- p.25 / Barriers to Entry --- p.25 / Economies of Scale --- p.25 / Product Differentiation --- p.26 / Capital Requirements --- p.26 / Switching Cost --- p.26 / Cost Disadvantages to New Entry Independent of Scale --- p.26 / Government Policy --- p.27 / Expected Retaliation --- p.27 / Bargaining Power of Suppliers --- p.28 / Bargaining Power of Buyers --- p.29 / Concentration of Buyers --- p.29 / Cost of Service an Insignificant Fraction of the Buyer's Cost --- p.29 / Undifferentiated Services and Low Switching Cost --- p.29 / Buyer Industry Earns Low Profits --- p.30 / Buyers Pose No Credible Threat of Backward Integration --- p.30 / The Industry's Service is Important to the Quality of the Buyers' Products --- p.30 / Threat of Substitute --- p.31 / Substitute Subject to Trends Improving Their Price-performance Trade-off --- p.31 / Profitability of Industry Producing Substitute --- p.31 / Rivalry Among Existing Competitors --- p.32 / Numerous or Equally Balance Competitors --- p.32 / Slow Industry Growth --- p.32 / Lack of Differentiation and Low Switching Cost --- p.32 / High Fixed Costs --- p.33 / Low Exit Barriers --- p.33 / Summary of Industry Analysis --- p.34 / Chapter IV. --- INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT --- p.37 / Ove Arup and Partners Company Limited --- p.37 / Review of the Resources and Capabilities of the Firm --- p.38 / Tangible Resources --- p.38 / Financial Resources --- p.38 / Physical Resources --- p.38 / Human Resources --- p.38 / Organisational Resources --- p.39 / Intangible Resources --- p.39 / Technological Resources --- p.39 / Resources for Innovation --- p.39 / Reputation --- p.40 / Identification of Core Competence --- p.40 / Weaknesses --- p.42 / Corporate-Level Strategy --- p.42 / Blurring Business-Level Strategy --- p.43 / Cost Structure --- p.43 / Human Resource Management --- p.44 / Organizational Structure --- p.44 / Market Sensing Activities --- p.44 / Concluding Remarks on Internal Environment --- p.44 / Chapter V. --- CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS --- p.46 / What Is Strategy? --- p.46 / Conclusions and Recommendations --- p.47 / Chapter VI. --- BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.51

<p>Professionals currently working in consulting firms and job-applicants aiming to work in this industry are very often finding themselves in a situation where they experience a skill-gap regarding the skills consulting firms have claimed as the must-have ones. Confusion about which are those skills has increased since from academics to professionals, from researchers to higher education institutions and from students and graduates to job-searchers, they all have a different understanding of which ones are those skills. In fact even from one consulting firm to the next one the skills differ. Moreover current and available literature is yet to explore deeper the project teams working for consulting firms in order to grasp a real understanding and easy identification of these skills, since studies so far have provided mixed set of skills for traditional project teams rather than for consulting project-teams leading to mixed discoveries and inconclusive results. The findings in this study provide support for a controversial discussion occurring when trying to identify the skills consultants affirm their employer require and how these companies acquire, foster and retain these skills.</p>

The management consultancy, a 14 billion EUR industry in Europe, has become an attractive market in the last couple of years. The Swedish market is blooming with an economic growth of a staggering 20 % according to analysts at Konsultguiden. The attractiveness of the market has brought many foreign players into the field such as Celerant. Celerant is a UK-based company earning a total of $145 million in 2006 with about 650 employees around Europe and the USA. Their focus is mainly within operational management. A few years ago, Celerant decided to expand in to the Nordic region consisting of Denmark, Norway and Sweden and has just recently started to focus a bit extra on the Swedish market. Using Porter’s model of Five Forces we look at the Swedish management consulting industry to see what factors to consider focusing on when entering the market. Through an analysis of the current management consulting market, we compare it to Celerant’s strategy for entering the Swedish market to see if our analysis differs or is similar to the consultancy’s actual strategy. This gives us a picture of how the management consultancies perceive the market and how they act accordingly. The results show similarities with two factors: the consultants and the clients. These seem to be the main factors to focus on as a management consultancy entering the Swedish market. There seems to be a current shortage of competent consultants on the Swedish market and therefore a necessity to focus on recruitment. Clients are what make business for consultancies and business connections need to be established before entering the market. However, we found that more precaution should be taken for factors such as substitutes and new entrants as well. There is a constant change of trends in the management consultancy industry and needs to be considered in order to stay competitive on the market, since a management consultancy needs to be able to offer what the clients demand.

Professionals currently working in consulting firms and job-applicants aiming to work in this industry are very often finding themselves in a situation where they experience a skill-gap regarding the skills consulting firms have claimed as the must-have ones. Confusion about which are those skills has increased since from academics to professionals, from researchers to higher education institutions and from students and graduates to job-searchers, they all have a different understanding of which ones are those skills. In fact even from one consulting firm to the next one the skills differ. Moreover current and available literature is yet to explore deeper the project teams working for consulting firms in order to grasp a real understanding and easy identification of these skills, since studies so far have provided mixed set of skills for traditional project teams rather than for consulting project-teams leading to mixed discoveries and inconclusive results. The findings in this study provide support for a controversial discussion occurring when trying to identify the skills consultants affirm their employer require and how these companies acquire, foster and retain these skills.

Die Komplexität der von Unternehmen zu lösenden Aufgaben nimmt ständig zu. Gleichzeitig erfordert es der Wettbewerb, in immer kürzeren Zeitabschnitten neue Erkenntnisse und Produkte zu generieren. Außer Frage steht, dass bei immer kürzeren Produkt- und Entwicklungszyklen und dem weltweiten Eintritt neuer Wettbewerber, auch in traditionellen Domänen der deutschen Wirtschaft, planerische Instrumente allein immer weniger ausreichen. Ortmann (2009) sieht das Management schon in der Hypermoderne angekommen, die durch eskalierende Kontingenzen und Pfadabhängigkeiten gekennzeichnet ist. Ausgefeilte Planung und Suche nach dem einen besten Weg (für alle Marktteilnehmer passende „best practices“) sind in diesen Zeiten ohne archimedischen Punkt der Wahrheit wenig erfolgversprechend. Daher wird die Fähigkeit von Unternehmen, sich schnell auf neue Bedingungen einzustellen und in allen Bereichen kreative und zugleich rentable Lösungen zu finden, als eigentliche Quelle nachhaltiger Wettbewerbsvorteile gesehen.