Publication Type

Book Chapter

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

1-2008

Abstract

Consultants are seen as core agents in the dissemination of business knowledgethrough their relative expertise and/or rhetorical and knowledge management practices.However, relatively few studies focus specifically on their role in projects with clientorganisations. This paper examines knowledge flow in consultancy projects fromlongitudinal observation and interview research as well as a survey of clients andconsultants working together. Our analysis suggests that the conventional view ofconsultants as disseminators of new management ideas to clients is, at best,exaggerated and certainly misrepresents their role in project work. Firstly, it tends tooccur by default rather than by design. More importantly however, learning is oftenconcerned with project processes or management more than the knowledge domain ofthe particular project and occurs in multiple, sometime unexpected, directions.Furthermore, a range of enabling and constraining conditions for knowledge flow areidentified - not in a deterministic sense, but as a loose or partial structuring of knowledgein practice.

Keywords

Consultancy, Knowledge flow, Projects

Discipline

Business Administration, Management, and Operations | Human Resources Management

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

The evolution of business knowledge

Editor

SCARBOROUGH, Harry

First Page

239

Last Page

258

ISBN

9780199229598

Publisher

Oxford University Press

City or Country

Oxford

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