Debates in Management and Consulting

COURSE OBJECTIVE
By following this course, you advance scholarly knowledge and skills within consulting, which go beyond introductory courses by focusing on key debates in management and consulting research. You also learn to review the method and content of your fellow student’s work and to provide recommendations that aim at helping to improve the work of your peers. These research skills constitute an essential basis for writing a Bachelor Thesis, an essential basis for the master specialization in management consulting, and good a preparation for a reflexive consultant practice.

Bridging theory and practice: Recognize, understand, construct, and critically assess positions in scientific debates expressed in the literature on management and consulting.

Academic & research skills: Conduct literature search and literature review on topics that are prevalent in the context of management and consulting research. Independently develop and deepen your own well-substantiated positioning in relation to a particular contemporary debate based on the literature.

Social skills: Critically review the work of peers and suggest improvements.

COURSE CONTENT
Building on introductory courses (BK/IBA), students will explore and deepen their knowledge of classical and contemporary scientific debate in management and consulting by means of a literature study. In this way, the course will advance the students’ ability to develop a well-informed position in a key scientific debate on, for example:
• Leadership (What makes a good leader?)
• Rigor vs. Relevance (How can the gap between theory and practice be bridged?)
• Consultants and their role in the diffusion of management knowledge (How do management ideas evolve over time?)
• Consultants and their role in managing change (Creating or preventing resistance?)
• CSR (How does it contribute to performance?)
• Consulting roles and the consultant-client interaction (What is(are) the role(s) of consultants? Are they helping or manipulating clients?)
• The professional project of consulting (Is consultancy a profession?)
• Human Resources Management (What role does it play: development or exploitation?)
• Strategy formation (Where does strategy come from?) On the basis of introductory lectures on these debates students chose one debate and work on papers related to this debate through extra literature search. They prepare for a mini-conference in which papers will be presented and reviewed. Based on the on mini-conference students can improve their papers.

TEACHING METHODS
Lectures, tutorials

TYPE OF ASSESSMENT
Paper, presentation, exam