The construction of discourses on management techniques : Exploratory study based on a snapshot of the consultants’ discourses on "5 steps"

The present research is a contribution to the analysis of the construction processes of consultants’ discourses on management methods included in their service portfolios. This is an exploratory study, based on the way a consultancy firm explain “5 steps” – a method co- designed by the consultancy firm’s director and the Information Systems Direction of a major industrial group – with three ideal-typical interlocutors: the grandmother, the knowledgeable friend, the prospect. Discourses were collected at a particular point in time of the method’s development: this collection has been designed and implemented with and within a major company, but it is still poorly known and has not been diffused to other customers: the discourses on the method are still being prepared. Analysis shows that discourses held enable to outline a minimal description of the method’s contents and its main characteristics presented as advantages. The utterances are globally expositive. The protocol also enables to highlight the discourses’ specificities on the basis of the interlocutors’ figures. The discourse to the grandmother figure is general and descriptive, on an educational tone. The discourse to the friend figure becomes more precise with a specialised vocabulary on the management fundamentals but especially on the method specific technical elements. The discourse to the prospect figure integrates a dialogic dimension. It takes on an educational and promissive tone referring to the management fundamentals rather than to the technical vocabulary of the method. Observation reveals that the discourse to the prospect is simpler than to a friend, whereas more specialised vocabulary could have been expected when addressing a prospect. The friend could then stand as the implicit central interlocutor in the development phase of a method.