Management consulting increasingly appears as a global endeavour as reflected in the increasing dominance of a few large, global management-consulting firms. However, features of the consulting service (e.g. its immaterial and interactional character) as well as aspects of management (e.g. its...

Companies in the business‐to‐business segment increasingly try to expand their product offerings into customer solutions offerings. This often implies adding value through professional services such as systems integration and business consulting related to the parent organization’s...

Alliances are an increasingly common way of organizing the uncertain exploration phase of radical innovation. It may, however, be argued that there is inherent tension between the logic of alliances and the logic of innovation. Whereas innovation is generally argued to require flexibility,...

During the past years, the use of management consultants has increased significantly, giving managers repeated experiences of both hiring and working with them. In an effort to understand the managers’ use of management consultants, this paper sets out to investigate managers’ conceptions of...

Management consultants are often described as accumulators, generators and disseminators of knowledge in the business world. Little research has however been devoted to the extent to which and the processes by which organizations hiring management consultants learn. This issue is addressed in...

Current literature on organizations often argues that firms are becoming increasingly dependent on knowledge residing outside their own boundaries requiring organizations to increase their entrepreneurial abilities and make their boundaries more flexible and permeable. This paper reviews the...

This article develops and demonstrates the utility of a framework for understanding professionals' reactions to strategic change in professional service firms as an interplay between a strategic intent, its manifestation in organizational roles and practices and its fit with existing...

The current paper investigates the use of management consultants in the Swedish public sector. Based on an analysis of the use of management consulting services in 55 Government agencies (GAs) in the years 2004-2011 the paper makes a number of contributions. First it confirms an overall growth...