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...

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...

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...

Integrating professional expertise in professional service firms (PSFs) is a key strategic challenge in the contemporary economy and individual firms. Previous research has pointed out that the governance of key aspects of PSFs, including knowledge integration, is shifting from a professional to...