As freelancers and consultants become more common, this is a question asked with increasing frequency, not least in professional services. Similarly, organizations increasingly face the dilemma of having to find and choose a suitable service provider. Given the often uncertain and complex nature of knowledge-intensive services, this is to a large extent a matter of being able to create trust – for the buyer to dare the leap of faith, for the seller to entice the buyer to trust them with a project. This thesis studies the question of trust creation on two markets: management consulting and theatre direction, discussing the significance of social context on the opportunities for trust creation By dividing the social context into three interrelated arenas, the market level, the organizational level, and the interindividual level, it becomes possible to distinguish how and where trust is created, unveiling how and on what basis decisions are made. The study thereby provides both an in depth account for how management consultants and theatre directions are chosen, and a contribution to research on professional service markets, highlighting the impact of the visibility of the service in question on the mechanisms of the market. Lovisa Näslund is a researcher at the Department of Management and Organization at the Stockholm School of Economics. She combines her research on knowledge intensive work in business and the arts with teaching service marketing and consulting projects in Swedish film and theater. Previously, she has worked as a production assistant at Teater Brunnsgatan Fyra and Teater Tribunalen in Stockholm. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2012.  Titel på spikblad: The leap of faith : trust creation on professional service markets</p>

Background: The management consulting industry has been facing difficulty. Since knowledge is described as such an important asset it is in our opinion interesting to study how it is managed in times of uncertainty. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study how management-consulting companies follow their knowledge management strategies in times of uncertainty. Procedure: Personal interviews were conducted with three consulting firms. Result: The consulting firms we interviewed have not been focusing on knowledge management questions during the uncertain last two years because of a lack of both time and money. Therefore, according to our findings management-consulting firms interrupted the previously followed knowledge management strategy. Knowledge management issues instead had to remain unchanged, which in the case companies seem to be close to the personalisation strategy

För ett serviceföretag är det väsentligt att kunna leverera tjänstekvalitet för att tillfredsställa kunden. Tjänsternas immateriella produktkaraktär gör det emellertid svårt för serviceleverantören i allmänhet och professionella tjänsteleverantörer i synnerhet att säkerställa kvalitet. Syftet med detta arbete är att utveckla en kontrollmodell som kan användas av professionella tjänsteleverantörer som ett hjälpmedel i arbetet att säkra servicekvalitet. Modellen bygger på relevant teori och består av tre kvalitetskategorier – image, teknisk kvalitet och funktionell kvalitet – genom vilka 13 kvalitetsdimensioner behandlas. För att pröva modellens användbarhet utvärderas med modellens intervjuguide de arbetsmetoder som används på företaget Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers. Resultatet på utvärderingen visar att kontrollmodellen behandlar de kvalitetsgenererande delarna av en serviceprocess som exempelföretaget arbetar med i praktiken vilket bekräftar att studiens kontrollmodell kan användas som ett hjälpmedel av professionella tjänsteleverantörer vid kvalitetssäkring.

Indirect Management Consulting (IMC) is a new concept within organizational change management consulting. The basic principle is to make the client more active in the change effort compared to conventional management consulting where the consultant actively drives the change. With IMC, the client is provided with a tailored set of skills and methods that makes him able to lead a change project and to make sure that the new organization is sustained. The IMC-model is a combination of management consulting and e-learning, where the consultant has an indirect role in supporting the client. This study has shown that the IMC-model increases the chance for successful change implementation by increasing knowledge and involvement of the managers in the client organization. A common problem with conventional consulting is that the new organization fails to persist some time after the change project has ended and when the consultants have left the organization. This is overcome by the IMC-model since it transfers necessary knowledge and tools to the client’s managers who then can drive the change as well as ensure sustainability long after the project itself is completed. The IMC-model is more cost-efficient than conventional consulting since less involvement is required by the consultant and since the customization of the e-learning systems can be made efficient by modularization. The lower costs make it possible to compete with a lower overall price and the combination of high quality of the organizational change with low prices makes the IMC-model an attractive complement to conventional management consulting. / This study is a part of an evaluation of the potential of a new business concept within the field of management consulting. The study is written to give insight of the functionality of the concept as well as the market barriers that a new company can expect to encounter if it decides to start up a business based on the concept. Indirect Management Consulting (IMC) is a new and unproven concept within change management consultancy and can in a simplified manner be described as a mix between e-learning and traditional management consultancy. The basic principle is that the client is given instructions and tools to be able to lead the change project by following a model similar to an e-learning program. The contents of the program are custom-built by a management consultant according to the needs of the change project. The consultant monitors the progress of the organizational change and adapts the model and gives feedback to the client as the project progresses. By following the IMC model, the client does the majority of the work while he does not require initial knowledge of change management since he is continuously provided with the information, tools and templates needed to analyze the organizational performance and implement the change successfully. The functionality of the IMC concept was evaluated in two ways: First by comparing the contents of the IMC-model with existing change management theories in order to find out if the model covers the most critical aspects of the theories. Secondly, the market for the IMC model was analyzed mainly by using Porter’s five-force theory. This study has shown that IMC can be an efficient method for implementing organizational change. Its efficiency comes from a number of sources, mainly related to the fact that the organization’s own managers have, compared to conventional management consulting, a high degree of involvement in the analysis of the organization and the implementation of the change. This in turn leads to better communication of the change plan and makes it easier to motivate employees to accept to the organizational change and make them feel a ‘sense of urgency’ for participating to successfully implement the project. The model was also found to make it easy for the manager to formulate a change strategy and to implement the change in a structured manner. For the consulting company, IMC means that costs (and consequently prices) can be kept much lower than for conventional consultant services. One main reason is that the model does not have to be built from scratch for each client. The contents of the model are relatively easily adjusted to suit most types of organizational changes. A second reason for the lower cost is that time the consultant spends at the client’s offices is minimized or eliminated. This gives an advantage compared to conventional management consulting. While the management consulting industry have relatively low entry barriers, that is however not equivalent that it is easy for a company to enter the market based on the IMC-model. A high quality of the services is crucial and, if that cannot be proven, the advantage of having a low price is diminished. It is therefore important for a new starter in this industry to have a portfolio of successfully implemented projects. For the IMC concept, this is problematic since the model is new and unproven. It can therefore be difficult to find the first clients and alternative entry strategies such as partnering or simply advocating a “non-profit” strategy for the first clients might be necessary.

This thesis examines which processes enable knowledge transfer and which factors affect the transfer of knowledge from a repatriate to the home office within management consulting services. The results from one firm engaging in management consulting activities in Sweden suggest that the prime process for knowledge transfer is through providing post-repatriation assignments, which requires the repatriate to use the acquired knowledge and to cooperate with coworkers and thus share the knowledge. The main factors affecting the knowledge transfer are a corporate culture and a strategy which promote teamwork and sharing. The study indicates that the studied firm has a pragmatic view of sharing knowledge; knowledge is shared when it is used, and all efforts should in the end gain the firm's clients.

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.

The present investigation looks at management consulting engagements through the project management lens, and explores what practitioners do in the initial stages of their projects. In the understanding that the front-end of the project is a very critical and important stage, this text begins by examining the literature on management consulting and on the definitional phase of projects, and demonstrates that the situations encountered in both domains are quite similar. For this reason, this study explores the project management practices that Swedish management consultants employ in the initial phases of the consulting projects. Particularly, it focuses on the practices that reconcile possible gaps in perspectives and expectations that often exist between client and consultant when this relationship is being formed.  The study had an inductive character and is cross-sectional in terms of time-horizon, focusing on the previous experiences of management consultants. In collecting the data, a survey strategy was usedwith semi-structured interviews involving nine Swedish management consultants from eight different consultancies. The process of analysis implied the use of template analysis, which provided researchers with enough flexibility to code, categorize, and interpret necessary findings. The results show that consultants favor practices that revolve around communication and interaction with the client, including interviews, workshops, and meetings, among others. In addition, they stress the importance of the use of documentation in order to reach an agreement on what the project is about. Moreover, these practices were often clearly connected to the issues that they, as project managers, must resolve at the front-end of projects. Interestingly, the results indicate that these challenges, identified by the management consultants, mostly match the ones identified in the project management literature. There is indeed a connection between project management practices and management consulting, from which both fields can benefit.

Peter Drucker said that ¡§knowledge is the most valuable property in the enterprise¡¨. While global economy model shifting to knowledge-based economy, it turns knowledge into the most important resource and strategy in an organization. Enterprises nowadays can not only transfer the invisible knowledge from employees to visible with the implementation of knowledge management, but also create higher values for the enterprises through the transferring, sharing, expanding, and value-adding of knowledge. This research is based on knowledge management, and its impacts and effects to enterprises. With reforming and remodeling process of a management consulting firm in the knowledge intensive industry, we explore its knowledge management strategies and its advances in the flows and architectures of knowledge management. Upon following the steps of knowledge definition, collection and filtering, the case-base is built with consulting and case practices. Based on the case-base, case-base reasoning (CBR) method is used to improve the diagnostic effects of the management consulting company. This knowledge management model could be expended to the other flows of consulting operations, in order to progress the overall consulting operation effects.

<p>Background: The management consulting industry has been facing difficulty. Since knowledge is described as such an important asset it is in our opinion interesting to study how it is managed in times of uncertainty. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study how management-consulting companies follow their knowledge management strategies in times of uncertainty. </p><p>Procedure: Personal interviews were conducted with three consulting firms. </p><p>Result: The consulting firms we interviewed have not been focusing on knowledge management questions during the uncertain last two years because of a lack of both time and money. Therefore, according to our findings management-consulting firms interrupted the previously followed knowledge management strategy. Knowledge management issues instead had to remain unchanged, which in the case companies seem to be close to the personalisation strategy</p>

We are amidst a period of radical change in Management Consulting worldwide. The latter half of the twentieth century has seen major extensions to the range of services promoted under the umbrella of Management Consulting. The traditional Management Consulting Firms, such as McKinsey & Co., tend to provide strategy consulting. By contrast, the other multinational Management Consulting Firms have focused on Business Process Re-engineering and other services with an Information Technology emphasis. Significantly, several multinational Management Consulting Firms have come under the control of Information Technology companies. As yet, very little research has been conducted into the issues that Management Consultants face in Australia. This research project provides an empirical investigation aimed at identifying these issues. In doing so, the study intends to answer the following research question "What are the major issues facing Management Consulting Firms in Australia?" To assist in answering this overarching question the study endeavours to address three investigative questions (1) What is the relative severity of issues facing Management Consulting Firms in Australia? (2) What are the Knowledge Management related issues facing Management Consulting Firms in Australia? And (3) What distinctions can be made between Knowledge Management issues and approaches of small-medium sized Management Consulting Firms and large Management Consulting Firms? This thesis is a compilation and comparison of evidence gathered from four separate but related sub-studies into the Management Consulting industry. The first, a Context Case Study of Management Consulting issues faced by small-medium sized firms, aimed to generate a rich, qualitative description of the study context, which, in turn, provides background to a larger follow-up Issues Delphi Study. Interpretation of the data gathered for the Context Case Study focuses on gaps between the literature and observed practice. The Issues Delphi Study garners response from members of the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) in two survey rounds that inventory issues and then gauge their importance. In addition, an exploratory and descriptive case study was performed to investigate Knowledge Management Strategies and Practices in the Australian branch of Accenture, a well known International Management Consulting Firm. Though the Accenture Case Study has an operational emphasis, both macro and micro issues of Knowledge Management are considered; macro issues pertain to the strategic leverage of Knowledge Assets, while micro issues pertain to creation, transfer and reuse of knowledge within the firm, and between the firm and its clients. Knowledge Management is identified as essential to the achievement of sustained competitive advantage for all Professional Service Firms; of which Management Consulting Firms are a subset. As such, a conceptual analysis of the Knowledge in Professional Service Firms model, developed by Empson and Morris (1998), was performed to enhance the researchers understanding of Knowledge Management in Management Consulting Firms. The analysis of the model's constructs and their relationships assists the researcher's analysis of data gathered from the other three sub-studies. In addition, the attempt to develop several model variants is explored and an argument for the resulting final model variant which incorporates a new construct, Knowledge Management, is presented. Finally, the study compares the issues identified from the four separate sub-studies. The issues gathered are mapped into Knowledge in Professional Service Firms model, providing useful insights into the importance of sound Knowledge Management practices in small, medium and large Management Consulting Firms.