Management Consultants as Knowledge Creators

The management consulting industry has been growingexponentially during the last two decades influencing therelationships between business schools, corporations anduniversities, achieving a significant role as a modern knowledgecreator. This book presents a study of the process of knowledgecreation undertaken by management consultants as understood by Kuhn(1996), whose theory was used to direct this exploration. ThirteenNew Zealand-based consultants who specialize in corporategovernance were interviewed. In this study, the categories ofcommunity and paradigm served as a point of entry to exploreknowledge creation practices. The data was analyzed qualitativelyin search for evidence of community belonging and patterns inconsultants knowledge creation practices. It has been found thatconsultants, in spite not having a formal regulating professionalbody, behave as a professional community. Research findings showthat consultants in governance share a paradigm, which has qualitycontrolprocesses such as reputation and re-engagement, and commonmethods in dealing with governance problems. In addition, there arecertain factors that determine the value of that knowledge forconsultants such as novelty, commercial value, utility andaccessibility.