University of Twente Student Theses
A better understanding of which factors influence the success of a management consulting project
Oonk, H.W. (2016) A better understanding of which factors influence the success of a management consulting project.
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| Abstract: | In the current literature there is some research done about success factor of a management consultant project, however all of these researches focus on individual factors which could potentially explain the success of a management consultant project. Earlier research did not yet construct a framework of factors which illustrates the different relations between the factors. The primary objective of this research is to develop a framework to provide the management consultancy industry, clients of management consultants and the academic world a detailed overview of which factors influence the success of a management consultant projects. The decision was made to focus on clients active in the small and medium-sized enterprises in the Netherlands, since 99.8% of the Dutch companies are categorized under this sector and a large amount of companies could potentially use this framework. To accomplish this objective and to develop a framework the following research question is formulated: What is a necessary and sufficient set of factors to explain the success of a management consultancy project? To get a better understanding of what is already known in the scientific literature about this subject a structured literature research was conducted. To deal with the disadvantages a scoping research was done to find out more about the topic of management consultancy. This input was used to develop a search string which was used to find articles in three scientific databases. To test the efficiency of this search string, a test was done with 8 articles found during the scoping research and were identified as important based on the value of the findings. If the search string did not find one of these articles the search string had to be adjusted. It became clear during multiple tests that 3 important articles could not be found in the three selected databases. Therefore a fourth databases was added, in which the 3 missing articles were found. After using the search string in the four databases a total of 5096 articles were found. First of all, the articles were selected based on the title, keywords and the abstract of the articles to decide if the articles were useful for this research and, as a result, had to be investigated and selected in the future for the research. After this selection a total of 192 articles were left. Based on described inclusion and exclusion criteria it was decided which articles would be used for the developed theoretical framework. After this selection a theoretical framework was developed which consisted of six factors: management consultant capabilities, management consultant company characteristics, client company characteristics, management consultancy project process, external factors and the factor which determined if a project was successful. To validate the theoretical framework a triangulation approach was used and two research methods were chosen. Empirical data was collected during 12 interviews and a focus group interview with originally 6, but after a last minute cancelation with 5 respondents, was conducted. The interview group and focus group consisted of an equal amount of management consultants and clients which previously used the service of a management consultant. All of the interviews and focus group were performed in Dutch, to ensure the respondents would be better able to describe their knowledge, experience and opinions. All of the interviews and focus group were recorded and transcribed. Thereafter the gathered data was coded with the programme Atlas.ti. This enabled the researcher to find out how many times factors or criteria were mentioned. After analyzing the data, it could be decided if; similar, different or confronting results were found within the literature review. During the interviews and focus group it became evident that the factor, ‘client company characteristics’, had to be divided in two factors. Reason being, the client company characteristics could be sufficient enough to execute the process successfully, but if the client does not have the proper characteristics the project would most likely fail according to the respondents. Therefore, these two are separated from each other. To answer the research question, it can be argued, based on the results of this research that the success of a management consultancy project is a complex multidimensional construct. Success is based on multiple factors and the interactions between those. In the end, a total of six factors influence the success of a management consultant project: external factors, management consultant capabilities, management consultant company characteristics, client company characteristics, client characteristics. Whereby the management consultant company characteristics influence the management consultant capabilities and the environmental factor influence all of the factors. The factors: management consultant capabilities, client company characteristics and client characteristics come together in the management consultant project process. In this process, communication is essential, without communication the different factors cannot combine and react on III each other. However, the three factors management consultant capabilities, client company characteristics and client characteristics are needed for a successful management consultant project. In the end, success of a management consultant project, based on the management consultant project process, and therefore the management consultant project process, is linked to the last factor which measures the success of a management consultant project. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 85 business administration, organizational science |
| Programme: | Business Administration MSc (60644) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/71581 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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