Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the major determinants that influence the management teachers to practice management consulting. The second objective of this research is to understand how the experience in management consultancy leads to value addition in their class room teaching. Design/methodology/approach To address the first research objective, focus group discussions were conducted with management teachers practicing consultancy. These results were used to generate items for the questionnaire. Factor analysis performed on the data revealed six determinants influencing management teachers to engage in consulting activity. To address the second research objective, focus group discussions with MBA graduates were used to comprehend how teachers with management consulting experience enrich the pedagogy. Findings The major findings of the study suggest that the determinants influencing management teachers to practice consulting are: improving competencies, furthering professional advancement, accruing strategic and financial benefit, enabling holistic development. Through study 2, the authors found out that management teachers add value in pedagogy by forging corporate world connection through real-time examples, enable critical thinking by breaking established paradigms, effective classroom delivery through storytelling, etc., and lending student support by assuming a mentor’s role. Practical implications This study found that faculty consulting reduces the perceived gap between the industry and academia and it also leads to effective class room teaching. Originality/value The study is the first attempt to empirically test the determinants influencing management teachers to practice consultancy services and qualitatively assess how the consultancy experience enriches the in-class performance.