Invisible but Powerful - the Discursive Framing of Management Consulting Projects

Academy of Management Proceedings2014Vol. 2014(1), pp. 13336–13336

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how management consulting services are evaluated in client organizations. By building on an interview study with organization members in two client organizations and drawing on frame analysis and discourse theory, the current paper shows that clients seldom perform formal evaluations of consulting projects. Instead, the projects are evaluated informally. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that this informal evaluation takes place through the discursive construction of frames in which the consulting projects and the involved actors are given a discursively constructed worth. By shedding light on how the informal evaluation is carried out and what factors influence the outcome of it, the paper contributes to the informal evaluation literature. It also contributes to the management consulting literature by explaining why some projects are perceived by clients as more successful than others. Lastly, it contributes to the frame analysis literature by showing in more detail how frames are discursively constructed by using frame-talk and mythopoetic-talk, thereby highlighting the importance of viewing framing not only as an individual activity, but rather as shared among groups and being socially, politically and contextually influenced.

Abstract

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