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...

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...

This paper addresses the question of how management consulting services are evaluated in client organizations. By building on an interview study with organization members in two client organizations and drawing on discourse theory, the current paper shows that clients seldom perform formal...

The aim of this study is to investigate how the quality of management consulting services is evaluated ex ante by public contracting authorities. Building on an explorative document study of 96 invitations to tender for management consulting services published in 2008-2012, seven different...

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...

Summary The rationale for this special issue was a feeling among the editors that, in studies of management consultancy, the client had been neglected or inadequately portrayed. Although, as we shall see, the extent of this neglect may have been overestimated, the size and quality of 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...

Professional Service Firms (PSFs) are increasingly pressured to strategic changes by evolutions in their environments. Research has especially emphasized changing client behaviours and demands, globalization and increasing competition. However, the internal dynamics of strategic change in PSFs...

Talent Management (TM) is currently on top of the HR agenda of managers all over the world. Still, TM research and writing has to a large extent been focused on multinational, US-based firms. Recent research has identified a need for empirical research on TM in other national and cultural...