Management Consultant Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Management consultant Industry - Essay Example in that location has been a lot of criticism of consultants, consulting companies as well as consulting as a profession. This in like manner spurred a large number of jokes and sarcastic comments being made on consultants, one of them being All that commission consultants do is to borrow their clients watches and tell them the time, then send in a huge bill. umpteen articles suck up also been penned on various unethical practices being carried out by consultants especially in big consulting firms (Kitay & Wright 2004, Pinault 2000). While some amount of criticism is valid and makes sense, a large part is also exaggerated. This essay aims to critically analyze both sides of the picture before arriving at the dos and impart onts for a successful marriage between business and consulting. Criticism against Consultants (Stage 3- Root Definition) Consulting by nature is a service industry and hence its deliverables are highschoolly int angible and subjective (Lemann 1999). Therefore, different business organizations have different evaluation of work done by consultants for them. Consultants generally charge a very high fee. Many times, their recommendations actually lead to worsening of conditions. Moreover, consultants have the inclination to implement or suggest plastered standard solutions which have developed in their own organizations or are generally used better practices in the industry. Hence, they dont make it a point to customize the solution for a event organization or come up with a new solution. (Pringle 1998). Consultants are often seen focusing on latest management fads in the market or using fashionable business jargon to bear upon the clients but which may have no implications on the output (Clark & Salaman 1998, Pinault 2000). A large number of consulting projects have simply failed to deliver the results while many an(prenominal) others lost touch with reality mid-way and had to be scrapped (Klenter & Mollgard 2006, Seidl & Mohe 2007). In many cases, implementation of the consultants advice has produced disastrous circumstances for an organization (Byrne 2002). Ferdinand Piech, former CEO of Volkswagen, even went to the extent of saying that If you motivation to ruin a company, you only have to try fixing it with the help of external consultants (Seidl & Mohe 2007). Analysis of Client- Consultant interaction by means of CATWOE approach Let us understand the client consultant relationship through CATWOE approach proposed by Checkland (Williams 2005). a. Customers The customers here would be the end consumers the client caters to. For example, for a steel manufacturer hatful buying utensils may be the customer. The impact of the client consultant relationship on the customers may draw in the medium to long term. b. Actors Actors would be the consultants or consulting firm who enable the transformation. The role of consultants is the most square for the success of t his relationship. Now days, consultants work in teams which comprise members of the client side as well. Therefore, in such cases certain client side employees are also actors. c. Transformation The transformation is the conversion from an unsolved job to a well laid out solution. The solution may be a suggestion, recommendation, documentation, model or an end to end implementation depending upon the nature and scope of work. d. Weltanschauung The compensation of the consu