Management Consulting In The Era Of The Digital Organization

The 4th Industrial Revolution is well underway. Our lives are changing at an exponential rate, resulting in a multi-faceted, deeply interconnected world. The digital revolution is integrating multiple technologies, which is leading to unprecedented paradigm shifts in the economy, management, and society. Entire systems across countries, industries, and societies are being transformed, triggering a transformation that is unlike anything humankind has ever experienced. Given the confluence of dramatic changes in organizational life, triggering emerging technology breakthroughs such as robotics, the internet of things, biotechnology, materials science, data science and big data, and quantum computing, this volume of the Research in Management Consulting series explores how the research and practice of management consulting is unfolding in a new era of profound shifts in the way researchers and consultants sense, think, and act. The authors of this volume bring both to scholars and practitioners the latest discussions of efforts to understand consulting in organizations amplified by the fusion of technologies across physical, digital, and biological worlds. They also bring to light a movement from human supervised artificial intelligence systems to fully autonomous artificial intelligence systems that have the potential to demonstrate intelligence beyond uman capabilities.

This book discusses the opportunities and conditions that digital technology provides to extend, innovate and differentiate the services offered by consulting companies. It introduces suitable artefacts like web-based consulting platforms, consulting applications, semantic technologies and tools for data mining and collaboration. Furthermore it examines concepts to evaluate the virtualization of consulting processes and showcases how solutions can be developed to blend traditional and digital consulting models. Presenting state-of-the-art research and providing a comprehensive overview of the methods and techniques needed for digital transformation in the consulting industry, the book serves as both a guide and a roadmap for innovative consulting companies.

The volume is based on the presentations and discussions from the Fifth European Conference on Management Consulting sponsored by the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management, which took place June, 2011 at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conference theme – Exploring the Professional Identity of Management Consultants – attempted to capture the highly ambiguous social status of this young and emerging profession. Management consulting does not have professional standards or accreditation criteria like those found in medicine or law, there are low barriers to entry, and a broad range of tasks are undertaken in the name of consulting. As a result, a crucial aspect of what constitutes such a loosely defined profession is the identity of its members. The professional identity of management consultants is continuously developing through the interplay of how consultants are seen and valued by clients as well as in the larger society, and how consultancy firms and consultants identify and position themselves. This theme includes a variety of topics, ranging from the interaction between consultants and their clients, consultant rhetoric and self-presentation, and the plethora of books, media and public discourse on consulting, to human resource policies and practices, knowledge development activities of consultancy firms, career and life stories of consultants and consultancies, and consulting associations, accreditation bodies, and education programs. All of these factors contribute, either directly or indirectly, to identity construction in the field of management consulting.

Whereas digital transformation, considered from the standpoint of strategy, suggests a direct link with business benefits, questions linger about the implementation of digital technologies that often result in a lack of return on investment. Many consulting trends adopt a technology-centered approach, assuming that AI, IoT, data analytics, or robotics, would lead to business performance. Yet, most of the time, organizational factors are neglected, especially hidden costs or hidden work. Moreover, unexpected consequences are overlooked, such as resistance to change. Digital transformation is a practical problem for managers. Are IS implementation approaches such as agile methods to Socio-Technical Systems (STS) sufficient to tackle these issues? This book suggests starting from organizational transformation, in essence, independently from technology with methods such as Business Process Management (BPM), Socio-Economic Approaches to Management (SEAM) or Organizational Development (OD). Overall, whereas technology-centered approaches have been associated with numerous unintended consequences and failures with previous generations of technologies (e.g., ERP or KMS), process-centered and human-centered approaches may represent a less risky approach to digital transformation implementation. This volume focuses on evaluating the potential performance improvements and risks of digital transformation and ways to assess how technology may support work and organizational goals. Therefore, whereas written by both academics and practitioners, this book has been written for all managers in companies and institutions in order to help them achieve digital transformation success.

You need to develop a digital and information technology management strategy and want a guide to do so.What if you had one tool that you could carry into meetings and write inside, that guided you step-by-step to set out the steps of the strategy, generate the size-of-the-prize, guide your team, design the tests for the hypotheses, conduct focus interviews, develop the vision, develop the strategy, set the scope of the function, identify the needed competencies and rank them, develop a governance model, develop the governing architecture, develop the implementation plan, develop the transformation plan, be guided on service level agreements, set up a budgeting process to prioritize investments, lay the foundation for a pilot implementation, track your daily and weekly tasks, plan each major meeting, plan the message for your team and manager, manage the project and guide you through critical update meetings?Now you do. The Digital & Information Management Journal is the companion guide to our popular books like Succeeding as a Management Consultant, The Operations Management Journal, The Investment Journal, The Leadership Journal, and The Strategy Journal, an Amazon bestseller.This journal helps readers walk into any situation in any organization anywhere in the world and understand how to develop a digital and information management strategy via to-do list prompts, self-assessments, and strategy calendars. All based on the combined best-practices of the author and the ex-McKinsey, BCG, et al. partners who produce all the strategy training programs on StrategyTraining.com.The greatest value of a Journal is that you write in them. They are not typically published in digital format. We published the digital edition of The Journal for those clients who found great value in always having a reference version with them. The digital format is therefore best purchased along with the print version. The digital format is not intended to be a substitute for the print format.

Boards and Management Consultants, the eighth volume in the Research in Management Consulting series, explores the growing complexity associated with the growing demands on boards of directors and the challenges raised by evolving expectations of what constitutes "good" governance. As a way of better understanding the ramifications for management consulting, particular—and timely—emphasis is placed on the evolution of expectations and needs in relation to boards and their operation. The chapter authors, as noted above a truly international group of experts, more than succeed in raising the reader’s awareness of the consequences that the evolving nature of corporate boards are having on the function of directors, how this function is being redefined by the players themselves—and what all of this change means for consultants and the realm of management consulting. Significant questions are raised and explored throughout the volume, from the extent to which these changes will lead to new social, moral, ethical, and professional challenges and opportunities, to how the relationships between consultants and their traditional clients—managers, administrators and employees—might evolve. As management consultants become more actively involved in governance issues, their role will clearly change, but will such changes enhance or constrain the role they have traditionally played in organizations?

The second volume in the Research in Management Consulting series focuses on developing knowledge and value in management consulting. While there has been an exponential explosion in both the presence and role played by management consultants, the exact nature of their contribution —to client organizations, to our understanding of management and organization, to our comprehension of the increasingly complex dynamics associated with business in a global marketplace, and to the development of their own firms—remains ambiguous. Just as the business world is experiencing rapid and, at times, volatile change, the consulting industry itself is also facing unprecedented change and challenge. Over the next decade, forecasts suggest a world of difference for management consulting, from different competitors and different types of projects and assignments, to different skill sets and different fee structures, to different client expectations.

Two world-renowned strategists detail the seven leadership imperatives for transforming companies in the new digital era. Digital transformation is critical. But winning in today's world requires more than digitization. It requires understanding that the nature of competitive advantage has shifted—and that being digital is not enough. In Beyond Digital, Paul Leinwand and Matt Mani from Strategy&, PwC's global strategy consulting business, take readers inside twelve companies and how they have navigated through this monumental shift: from Philips's reinvention from a broad conglomerate to a focused health technology player, to Cleveland Clinic's engagement with its broader ecosystem to improve and expand its leading patient care to more locations around the world, to Microsoft's overhaul of its global commercial business to drive customer outcomes. Other case studies include Adobe, Citigroup, Eli Lilly, Hitachi, Honeywell, Inditex, Komatsu, STC Pay, and Titan. Building on a major new body of research, the authors identify the seven imperatives that leaders must follow as the digital age continues to evolve: Reimagine your company's place in the world Embrace and create value via ecosystems Build a system of privileged insights with your customers Make your organization outcome-oriented Invert the focus of your leadership team Reinvent the social contract with your people Disrupt your own leadership approach Together, these seven imperatives comprise a playbook for how leaders can define a bolder purpose and transform their organizations.