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Consultancy is remarkably diverse and indeed it is used as a catch-all term encompass-ing a vast range of external services from high-level advice on organisational strategy to fi nancial advice on transactions and contracts; from hands-on support for improvements in operational performance to the implementation and maintenance of new IT systems.

These services are provided by organisations which differ hugely in their size and nature:

multinational IT services companies, global accountancy-based fi rms, smaller specialist consultancies, and sole traders. They undoubtedly can’t all be the same and indeed some of the large management consultancies are calling their consulting services advisory to distinguish them from the IT and accounting fi rms.

We can therefore consider consultancy to be an advisory service contracted by and pro-vided to organisations by appropriate specialists who assist in an objective and indepen-dent way to iindepen-dentify issues/problems, analyse them, and recommend solutions.

It is clear therefore that such a process will have a signifi cant impact on the organisation contracting for it. The advice given can have major impact on the operation of the organi-sation and if it is not appropriate or correct it can seriously damage the business. On the other hand sound advice given by an able and experienced practitioner which takes the business forward is invaluable.

Consultancy has in the past century made an important and signifi cant contribution to the global economy. There have been tumultuous organisational transformations, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, major changes in the public sector and corporates. In all of these consultants have been the essential agents of organisational change. Consultants give organisations access to crucial knowledge through their experience and contacts.

Consultancy has grown because it represents a powerful solution for the institutional transfer of best practice. It is actually only one of many ways in which this can happen but it has become, through the anti-monopoly legislation of the 1930s in America and then

regulatory sanctions, the alternative legal method to transfer knowledge between possibly competing organisations.

By the 1960s consultancy practices had established, institutionalised, and defended con-sulting from other professional competitors. They developed professional governance struc-tures based on other professions to manage the practice and strong internal culstruc-tures. Then as now they promote their corporate culture as the indicator of their core competence.

However, being a profession is more than this. A profession is defi ned by certain quite specifi c things. The fi rst is a body of knowledge which defi nes the profession and which can be gained through professional education and training. In addition a number of years of experience are required and the practising professional keeps continuously knowledgeable about developments in theory and practice. The member of a profession puts knowledge and experience at the disposal of clients and in serving the clients’ interests subordinates his own. The whole profession recognises and applies a set of ethical norms which defi ne proper behaviour within the profession. Society recognises the status of the profession and members of the profession apply self-discipline in observing the profession’s behaviours.

The profession organises itself into a voluntary membership organisation to exercise col-lective self-regulation over working to an accepted code of professional conduct.

About a century ago consultants operated in several different professional fi elds and they defi ned themselves as bankers or accountants or engineers depending on the assign-ment. Therefore at this time consultants did not see themselves as part of a unifi ed pro-fession. However, they soon began to compete for assignments and began to realise that they were in the same professional area. They became concerned to appear professional as consultants to act both as a barrier to potential rivals from other professions and as a means of establishing a perception of professional behaviour which could generate more assignments and higher fees.

However, at this time and for a couple of decades after it consultants lacked the specifi c qualifi cations which defi ned the older professions. They did not have specialised journals or formalised university education, standards of admission and performance, or a centra-lised body of knowledge. Without these professional credentials consultants could not (and cannot) constitute a profession. Then as now the leading practices reject proposals to increase the professional standing of individuals at the expense of the power held by the practices.

Consultants decided that objective standards of professionalism were less important than getting the public to think of them as professional and emphasised the similar-ity between consulting and the established professions. They began to emphasise con-sultancy’s ongoing move towards professionalism without having the things which defi ned it in place, believing that behaving like a professional is as good as being one, and they emphasised the association between consultancy and the established profes-sions, especially law.

Ultimately this use of comparison with well-established professions has resulted in con-sultancy failing to become a profession. The leading concon-sultancy practices reject the need to achieve full professionalisation, as shown by their relationship with the professional body and its award of certifi ed management consultant (CMC). Most consultancy prac-tices do not require that their consultants obtain the CMC because the certifi cation of

individual consultants would weaken the practice’s implicit certifi cation of its own con-sultants. They generally do not believe that individual consultants are all of equal profes-sional standing—an inherent attribute of a profession—with their own consultants. At present without any statutory regulation or full support for the professional body from the larger practices the CMC designation has not become a signifi cant factor. Therefore professionalism is seen as a characteristic of individual practices rather than referring to consultancy as a whole.

However there are signifi cant practices which do believe that the professional approach distinguishes them from others because many practices only give lip service to professional standards. The former practices do recognise the importance of having a professional body responsible for all the components which demonstrate a profession and actively work with them to promote the CMC and professional standards.

During the 1990s consultancy made considerable progress towards professionalisation.

It has become the focus of academics across a variety of academic disciplines gaining a serious academic base. There is also a clearer educational pathway with relevant master’s-level courses in a number of universities and the degree-level qualifi cations of the professional body providing a sound underpinning knowledge for prospective consultants.

This growing body of academic knowledge and the explicit discussions of ethical lapses are strengthening the case for consultancy to become a profession.

The various recent scandals and emphasis on personal accountability are bring-ing about a focus on professional values and it could be that this will this time lead to professional status for consultancy. However, there are many consultants especially in the larger practices who see no need for this because they can adopt the style of a profession—language, rewards, client interaction—without the constraints of profession-al status such as statutory regulation, individuprofession-al quprofession-alifi cation, and professionprofession-al liability.

So if behaving like a professional works as well as being one why would consultants want consultancy to be a profession? My view is that they will only want this when their clients recognise the need for them to have the characteristics, constraints, and controls of a profession.

Types of Management