Lessons Learned From Management Consulting Subject - Essay Example

Reflective essay on lessons learned from management consulting I think management consultancy is highly interesting area, especially becauseof the contemporary environment of fast advancing technology and rapid globalization. While it is true that the business dynamics have been tremendously transformed in the last few decades, the recent times have especially seen huge revenue collection by few management consultancies. It is really amazing that total world revenue on consultancies on diverse areas is earned by 15 firms! (Ringland and Shaukat, 2004). Indeed, the scope for small consultancy firms can also not be discounted primarily because of the small enterprises that strive to compete with the global businesses. The need for management consultants has increasing been felt because the technology has revolutionalized communication and shrunk the world into a global village. Information sharing has changed the equation of the businesses and made them highly competitive. Innovation and creative input has become essential part of business strategy that helps them to gain leverage against their rivals. Nikolova and Devinney assert that management consultants act as ‘relationship builder, owner of trust, interpreter of what the client wants; to translate a client problem which is often a symptom, into a hypothesis around a cause and therefore into something which can be resolved by analysis’ (Nikolova and Devinney, 2009). The consultants help them to improve and improvise business through innovative managerial strategy in various fields of diverse businesses. The personal and professional expertise of the consultants and consultancy firms becomes the major assets for the businesses to maintain a competitive edge. This is perhaps the main reason for the burgeoning power of consultancy firms. In the changing global scenario of business dynamics, the current demand for the consultants is not surprising. But, I wonder if the present demand of the consultancy firms would maintained in the future also. The fast changing environment of business imperatives have already brought in huge changes in the corporate world. The dominant 15 consultancy firms were used by big business and corporate houses where serious cases of misuse and abuse of shareholders rights through serious malpractices in auditing, accounting etc. were exposed. Don’t you ever wonder at the roles these consultancy firms had or had not played in the business scandals, starting with Enron? But the resiliency of the business has not dampened the popularity of these firms. I believe that their expertise is still very much in demand but the leadership within the businesses has become more involved, focused and proactive in the operations of the managerial consultancy. The two areas where the consultancy has made significant inroad are: human resource development; and globalization. The highly competitive nature of emerging new models of global business has increased the risks and responsibilities of the organizations. Organizations must change because their environments change (Bateman, 1990). The organizations need to implement necessary changes to not only survive but compete with their rival with confidence and effectively meet the challenges of the constantly evolving business environment. The management consultants help them to evolve with time and implement the necessary changes. The changing paradigms of business due to globalization are complex and need to be explored for the widespread differences of ideologies amongst the increasing pluralistic society. I would be discussing these two areas, especially with reference to the present need and future requirements of the business across the globe. Globalization In the rapidly changing environment of globalization, the businesses have become more competitive thereby making it obligatory for them, as well as for the working force to become more flexible and swiftly adapt to the changing technologies and work environments. If I were to become Management Consultant, this would be the priority area for me! Charles Hill is absolutely correct when he asserts that ‘countries have different political, economic, and legal systems… All these differences can and do have major implications for the practice of international business’ (Hill, 2004). Globalization has necessitated increased mobility that requires the ever increasing need for flexibility of time and place especially when the business is spread across the different countries. Rhinesmith says that ; globalization is not where you do business but how you do business’ (Rhinesmith, 2004, p174). The main purpose of global consultancy is to ‘build leaders who can adapt locally while managing with global perspective’ (ibid, p177). Since, businesses are people centric, the need to understand the changing requirements of the people becomes paramount for the business. The Consultants help provide the necessary knowledge and information regarding the country specific business imperatives and promote better understanding of the cross cultural value system. It would be true for the future also because pluralistic society would be the norm of the future. The socio-religious culture of the community has strong impact on the attitude and consumer behaviour of the public, which has direct affect on economic transactions of the company. It is therefore vital that needs and concerns of the community, within which the firm intends to operate, be studied in detail so that sensitive public issues are not violated. HR Consultants The rapid globalization and technological advancement of the recent time has greatly revolutionized the labour processes. I really don’t know how Ulrich et al can say that the businesses do not think that HR has any contribution towards managerial strategy or performance outcome of the organization (Ulrich et al, 1995).With the advent of technology, the collective production has become more complex. There is a significant paradigm shift in the technical division of labour from direct to indirect model that is focused on regulation, administration, improvement and innovation to meet the challenges of the changing time. Human resource being central to the organizational visions and goals, HR leadership initiatives become crucial factor for creating and organizing an effective workforce that is able to make valuable contribution of promoting a sense of togetherness and collective responsibility that reflects in the increased output and improved performance outcome of the organizational goals and objectives. The recent concept of externalization of ‘resources’, through outsourcing has become popular with the organizations that need to concentrate in their core competencies. The contractual workforce serves to decrease the responsibility of the organization towards the people who would be ‘indirectly’ doing their work and at the same time, providing them with the opportunity to improve and improvise their business competencies through state of the art research and development. The strategy helps to provide the company with huge leverage in innovative products and services. I serious consider that cultural production signifies construction of collective identities on the basis of cultural diversification and therefore, the platform that promotes this production stresses the importance of technical division of labor that emphasizes the specialized type of labor inputs, required for different level of production. The technical division of labor has become job specific and highly skilled. At the same time, cultural production contributes towards creating identities and disseminating information and knowledge and also helps to establish a unique relationship among individual, promoting understanding. These are highly relevant issues of the new age and therefore, I think, the role of management consultants would become more important in the coming years. The compulsions of the present times require versatility in the work ideology and functioning. The workforce must be looked as resource that can be tapped to improve and improvise the performance of the organization in the fiercely competitive business setting. The consultants help the management to accept the challenge of creating a cohesive and encouraging atmosphere so that the workers could get effective learning environment. Through training and development, they are provided with a wider scope for professional growth in the area of core competencies. In fact the management consultants have become intrinsic to the organizations because of the ever expanding business opportunities across the globe. The human resource strategy has become the most critical factor that develops the highly indigenous team of human capital that helps to provide the organization with a competitive advantage that is unique. XX also agrees that in future HR Consultancy would be driven by two drivers; outsourcing services for HR requirements and human requirement of the knowledge economy (Lawler III and Mohrman, 2003,p145). One can therefore conclude that effective HR strategy is an important source of competitive advantage and HR Consultants help the organizations to acquire, retain and train the human resource as per the demands of the changing times. Reference Bateman, Thomas S., and Carl P. Zeithaml. Management: Function and Strategy. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1990. Hill, Charles. (2004). International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace. 7th ed. Irwin/McGraw-Hill. Lawler III, E E and Mohrman, S A. (2003). Creating a Strategic Human Resources Organization: Trends and New Directions. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Ulrich, D; W, Brockbank; E, A. Yeung; and D Lake. (1995). Human Resource Competencies: An Empirical Assessment. Human Resource Management, 34, 1995, 473-495. Rhinesmith, Stephen H. (2004). Globalization Consulting, in Ringland, Gill and Shaukat, Asfar, An Uncertain Future for Management Consulting, EBF. Ringland, Gill and Shaukat, Asfar. (2004). An Uncertain Future for Management Consulting. EBF, issue 19, 58-61. Nikolova, N. and Devinney, T. (2009). Influence and power dynamics in client-consultant teams. Journal of Strategy and Management, 2(1): 31-55. Read More