Manifestations of Moral Legitimacy in the Client Consultant Relationship

This paper offers new insights for understanding the exercise of moral legitimation in the consultant client relationship. The paper argues that the consultants’ objectivity and independence help generate moral legitimacy in the client because of specific power and competitive challenges that client managers face in decision making roles. By making use of the theory of ‘moral seduction’ and ‘strategic issue cycling’ the paper demonstrates that clients seek to legitimise their intentions for using consultants because of the perceived benefits that can be achieved by generating changes. The paper identifies that moral legitimacy happens because of specific outputs that clients want to accomplish in the organisation as well as procedures where externality and independence helps alleviates internal tensions. Organisational outputs concern the implications and consequences of decisions with regards to the wider common good. Organisational procedures concern the processes and operations with which transparency and accountability are displayed in making decisions. By making use of extensive empirical data from consultants and clients the paper demonstrates the severity of the internal political challenges and the indirect solutions consultants seem to provide because through their externality and independence