Legitimation of consultancy in different institutional contexts: A comparative analysis in business, administration and science

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Due to the growing socio-economic relevance of knowledge and knowledge work, management consultancy has become a wide-spread phenomenon not only in the business sector, but also in public administration and in organizations belonging to the scientific field. In these fields the forms and degrees of legitimation, however, vary. Research on management consultancy so far has focused on the legitimation granted through consultancy. For instance external consultancy was mainly analyzed as a resource of legitimation for organizations. Much less attention has been devoted to the legitimation of management consultancy, i.e., the conditions of legitimation of consultancy itself. With this focus, our research project aims at theoretically and empirically coming to terms with the legitimation of consultants. We focus in particular on processes of legitimation on different social levels and on the interplay of these processes in the constitution of the consultant as a legitimate social actor. Which processes can be analyzed at the micro-level of interactions and at the organizational meso-level and how are they interrelated with regard to the constitution of actors? How do these processes of legitimation at the project and the organizational level refer to the macro-level of different institutional logics in business, administration and academia? In addition, how do processes of legitimation differ with regard to the type of consultancy? These questions will be addressed in a qualitative research design with two case studies in each of the three different institutional contexts, where consultancy takes place. To a large extent, theoretical foundations come from the new institutionalism in organizational analysis.With this, we conduct the first scientific comparative study on the legitimation of management consultancy while taking into account the institutional logics of different contexts of consultancy. This research is important for a variety of reasons. First, research on management consultancy will benefit from our project as we develop a theoretical model in which the multi-layered processes of legitimation between micro-, meso- and macro-levels are analyzed. Furthermore different sectors, in which management consultancy plays a role, are analyzed for the first time in a systematic and comparative perspective. Second, our research has implications for the new institutionalism in organizational analysis. We integrate processes of legitimation at different levels into a comprehensive approach to analyze the constitution of actors; this is of paramount importance for the micro-foundation of the new institutionalism. Third, we contribute to comparative research on organizations. Similarities and differences concerning organizational reactions to the interventions of external consultants adavnce our knowledge on the nature of different types of organizations.