Management Consultants As Knowledge Creators: an Empirical Study on Their Practice

The management consulting industry has been growing exponentially during the last two decades influencing the relationships between business schools, corporations and universities, achieving a significant role as a modern knowledge creator. This book presents a study of the process of knowledge creation undertaken by management consultants as understood by Kuhn (1996), whose theory was used to direct this exploration. Thirteen New Zealand-based consultants who specialize in corporate governance were interviewed. In this study, the categories of community and paradigm served as a point of entry to explore knowledge creation practices. The data was analyzed qualitatively in search for evidence of community belonging and patterns in consultants knowledge creation practices. It has been found that consultants, in spite not having a formal regulating professional body, behave as a professional community. Research findings show that consultants in governance share a paradigm, which has quality control processes such as reputation and re-engagement, and common methods in dealing with governance problems. In addition, there are certain factors that determine the value of that knowledge for consultants such as novelty, commercial value, utility and accessibility.