Seminar – Talk normal! How Management consultants translate academic knowledge into practical advice

Professor Eva Boxenbaum, Copenhagen Business School

Management consultants play a key role in bringing academic knowledge into the realm of organisational practice. This paper investigates the processes through which consultants commodify academic management knowledge as they translate it into practice. Informed by a Scandinavian institutionalist approach, we conducted a qualitative case study of two consultancies. We traced how consultants co-constructed research-based consultancy products with their clients. We identity four strategies that consultants use to translate academic knowledge into consultancy advice in interaction with their clients: practical relevance, academic anchoring, comprehensible communication, and actionable advice. We also find their interactions to unfold through a three-step process during which consultants make use of one or more of these strategies as they translate academic knowledge into consultancy advice. The findings advance extant insight into knowledge flows between consultant and clients in the development of consultancy advice and offer a more dynamic and interactive account of how consultants use academic knowledge to develop their service offer.

Speaker bio

Eva Boxenbaum is professor of organisation and management theory at Copenhagen Business School. Her research investigates the role of actors and of multimodal communication in processes of institutionalisation and institutional change. Her work has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Organization Theory, Strategic Organization, and California Management Review. She is an associate editor of Organization Theory and currently serves as Division Chair of the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management.