Acquiring knowledge through management consultancy: a national culture perspective

Abstract

This paper examines how national culture informs the sourcing of management knowledge through external consultancy. First, it hypothesises and compares the relationship between quantitative measures of Hofstede's cultural indices with adjusted expenditure on consulting in nine countries. Two cultural indices are found to correlate with consulting use – power distance (negatively) and individualism (positively). However, the disparity between our findings and prior research suggests limitations of generalisation in studies solely employing quantitative cultural indices to understand the purchasing of business knowledge. We therefore propose the use of supplementary, qualitative data with sensitivity to local contexts and briefly apply this by using secondary sources to provide historical narratives for two countries – the UK and Japan. Overall, we find and tentatively explain significant statistical relationships between Hofstede's cultural indices and adjusted expenditure on consultancy. We then draw attention to wider implications for consulting research and for practitioners involved in this context.

Salient Complexities of Engaging External Consultants in Information Systems Projects

“…However, despite its importance, the development, implementation and exploitation of IS within organisations remains problematic and has been fraught with failure [3], abandonment [4], escalations [5] and overruns [6]. Seeking to stem the high failure rates of their projects, many organisations have sought to engage consultants [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]. Consultants are primarily subject matter experts [13] and knowledge brokers [14] [15] whose work primarily focuses on the translation of shared knowledge, experience and skills [16] [15] [11] [12] [17].…”

“…Seeking to stem the high failure rates of their projects, many organisations have sought to engage consultants [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]. Consultants are primarily subject matter experts [13] and knowledge brokers [14] [15] whose work primarily focuses on the translation of shared knowledge, experience and skills [16] [15] [11] [12] [17]. Consultants also play a major role in efforts by organisations to when necessary, intentionally discard well-established knowledge within the organisation in order to allow new knowledge to be created [18] [19].…”