Aristotle and the Management Consultants: Shooting for Ethical … · The ability of management...

Aristotle and the Management Consultants: Shootingfor Ethical Practice

David Shaw1

Published online: 11 December 2019# The Author(s) 2019

AbstractThe academic literature on management consulting raises many questions about the ethicsof management consulting. The uncertain, emergent, and often socially constructednature of management consultancy knowledge limits the scope both for regulating theindustry in the manner of the established professions, and for evaluating managementconsultants’ work objectively. The character of management consultants is therefore acentral issue in how far clients and other stakeholders can trust them. This paper considersthree questions, using Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a guide. These are, first, ‘Whatis the function of a management consultant?’, second, ‘How should a managementconsultant act in order to be a good management consultant?’, and third, ‘Where doesthe boundary lie between the ethical responsibilities of the management consultant andthose of the client and other stakeholders?’ Aristotelian virtue ethics are valuable inanswering these questions. Their focus on character is well suited to the distinct ethicalproblems of management consulting. Aristotle’s overarching concern with humanflourishing, and an ethically balanced approach towards benefiting from the good thingsto which a virtuous person may aspire, has more promise as an influence on consultants’behaviour than the lists of prohibitions that typify codes of ethical practice in the industry.Aristotle’s call for leaders to habituate their people to ethical behaviour should be heardby the leaders of management consultancy firms. In accordance with Aristotle’s philos-ophy, this paper proposes a positive target at which management consultants can aim inshooting for ethical practice.

Keywords Management consulting . Ethics . Aristotle . Moral virtues . Knowledge

Philosophy of Management (2020) 19:21–44https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-019-00125-w

* David [email protected]

1 Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s40926-019-00125-w&domain=pdf

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8247-6162

mailto:[email protected]

Introduction

A growing body of academic literature about management consulting, written from the criticalperspective, raises questions about the ethics of management consulting practice. Managementconsultants routinely describe themselves as professionals (Harvey et al. 2017), and there is alarge body of literature on professional ethics that can shed light on the ethics of managementconsulting. Nevertheless, management consultancy is different from established professionssuch as medicine, law and accountancy, and literature that focuses specifically on managementconsultancy as a distinct kind of practice from an ethical perspective is sparse. A paradox liesat the heart of management consulting, which distinguishes it sharply from the establishedprofessions. Although management consultancy is routinely described as a knowledge-intensive industry (Alvesson 2000), there is no generally accepted body of managementconsultancy knowledge (Fincham 1999; Visscher 2006). Moreover, whereas members of theestablished professions form communities who share their knowledge for the benefit of thepeople whom they serve (Pellegrino 1989), management consultancy knowledge is typicallyproprietary and constitutes a basis of competition between management consultancy firms.The pressure on management consultants to provide relevant, practical assistance to theirclients at the pace at which managers have to make decisions inhibits the deployment of averifiable body of knowledge (Kieser and Leiner 2009). Much management consultancyknowledge is socially constructed, and may take the form of management fashions whosebenefits are not susceptible to objective evaluation (Nikolova et al. 2009; Wright et al. 2012).The ability of management consultants to secure the trust of clients, in circumstances in whichthe outputs of their work are frequently beyond the reach of objective assessment, is a centralrequirement in management consulting (Glückler and Ambrüster 2003). These distinctivecharacteristics give rise to ethical questions in respect of management consulting that aresubstantially distinct from those arising in normal professional settings. This paper seeks toexamine these questions, using Aristotle’s (1934) Nicomachean Ethics as a guide, in combi-nation with literature on the ethics of the professions that builds upon Aristotle’s work.Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Thrace; he was the son of the physician to the King ofMacedon (Russell 1967) and, perhaps because of this, he frequently draws upon analogiesfrom medical ethics in his work. Management consultancy has some points of comparisonwith medicine in the sense that it too is a kind of helping profession, and this paper drawsparticularly on comparisons between the ethics of management consulting and medical ethics,in order to identify and shed light upon the distinctive ethical characteristics of managementconsulting.

Acknowledging that it is impossible to provide a precise definition of good and ethicalaction, Aristotle sets out to provide a target so that, by aiming at it, we may have a betterchance than otherwise of shooting in the right direction. This paper draws upon theNicomachean Ethics so as to set up a target at which, like good archers, managementconsultants may aim, so as to shoot for ethical practice. In applying ideas from virtue ethicsin the Aristotelian tradition to the professions, Pellegrino (1989, 1995), a more contemporaryscholar of the ethics of medicine and other established professions, acknowledges theproblems involved in using virtue ethics as the basis for a general ethical theory. The virtueethics approach focuses attention on the kind of person that someone needs to be in order to begood. Problems arise from the circularity of virtue ethics arguments that assert that, on the onehand, the virtuous person does what is good and, on the other hand, that the good is what thevirtuous person does. While acknowledging these difficulties, however, Pellegrino (1989,

22 Philosophy of Management (2020) 19:21–44

1995) argues that they can, to a large extent, be overcome in respect of the ethics of theprofessions, such as medical ethics, because there are fewer difficulties in defining what isgood in the medical profession than in human life in general. It will be argued in this paper thatthe virtue ethics approach has promise also as a way of examining management consulting. Inthe absence of any generally accepted body of knowledge of the kind that is used in theestablished professions to assess the quality of a professional’s work, clients and otherstakeholders must rely heavily on management consultants’ character to assess the help thatthey provide. Aristotle (1934, p.3) begins the Nicomachean Ethics by observing that ‘every artor science aims at some good’, so that ‘for instance, the end of the science of medicine ishealth’, and that the practitioners of any art or science have their own particular function. Ifprofessionals’ functions, and the ends towards which their work is directed, can be defined, itshould also be possible to define the virtues that would enable them to be good practitioners oftheir profession. What then is the function of the management consultant? How should amanagement consultant act in order to be a good management consultant? Aristotle (1934, p.149) also draws attention to the boundaries between practitioners’ and clients’ responsibilities,pointing out for example that it may be the case that a patient’s ‘illness is voluntary, in thesense of being due to intemperate living and neglect of the doctors’ advice’. Where then doesthe boundary lie between the ethical responsibilities of the management consultant and thoseof the client and other stakeholders with an interest in good management consulting? Each ofthese three questions is considered in turn below.

What Is the Function of a Management Consultant?

The process of consultation clearly lies at the heart of the function of a management consultant.Aristotle (1934, p. 137) provides a specific observation in the Nicomachean Ethics on thenature of consultation, which points the way towards defining what that function is:

Deliberation then is employed in matters which, though subject to rules that generallyhold good, are uncertain in their issue; or where the issue is indeterminate, and where,when the matter is important, we take others into our deliberations, distrusting our owncapacity to decide.

The nature of deliberation (bouleusis), and of the closely connected intellectual virtue ofprudence (phronesis), which is sometimes translated as ‘practical wisdom’, are central themesin Aristotle’s work and in scholarly commentaries on it. Brief though this passage is, therefore,it connects the topic of consultation with some of the major ideas in Aristotle’s work.

A number of propositions as to the function of the management consultant flow fromAristotle’s observation. First, management consultants assist clients who are uncertain as tohow to act in important matters. Second, management consultants assist clients who ‘[distrusttheir] own capacity to decide’. Third, management consultants are taken into their clients’deliberations, so that they have a privileged position in the clients’ decision-making that isweighted unduly towards neither the clients nor the consultants. Fourth, management consul-tants must exercise prudence (phronesis). Aristotle (1934, p. 337) says that ‘it is held to be themark of a prudent (phronimos) man to be able to deliberate well about what is good andadvantageous for himself’, so management consultants will only be of use to their clients ifthey have the intellectual virtue of prudence (phronesis). Fifth, the work of managementconsultants is focused essentially – but not entirely exclusively, as discussed below - on

Philosophy of Management (2020) 19:21–44 23

implementation, that is, on means and not on ends, because as Aristotle states (1934, p.137),‘we deliberate not about ends, but about means’.

The scope of Aristotle’s concept of prudence (phronesis) is the subject of debate. Aristotleappears to say that the exercise of prudence (phronesis) is a purely rational activity that isconcerned with determining how particular ends are to be achieved, and that the desire forthose ends stems solely from the non-rational, moral virtues (Moss 2011). This suggests thatthe domain of prudence (phronesis) is limited to matters of implementation. While Aristotle isclearly committed to the distinction between the intellectual and the moral virtues, prudence(phronesis) may yet have crucial roles in the detailed specification of the ends for which thenon-rational, moral virtues have produced the desire (Irwin 1975; Wiggins 1975–76). OnAristotle’s account, moral virtue involves striking a mean between opposed moral errors, anidea that is discussed in more detail below; someone may have a general wish to showliberality (eleutheriotes) to another who is in need, but it is a matter for prudence (phronesis)to determine how much to give so as to strike the mean between the opposite errors ofmeanness (aneleutheria) and prodigality (asotia) (Moss 2011). Thus, it seems reasonable tosuppose that there is a role for prudence (phronesis) in the detailed specification of the ends forwhich the moral virtues have produced the desire, and not purely in the means for achievingthose ends. The practical realities of management underscore the reasonableness of theproposition that management consultants should not be confined to advising solely onmatters of implementation. Whipp et al. (1989) explain organisational change as the outcomeof interplay between the content of the change that is to be brought about, the context in whichthat change is to occur, and the process by which it is to be implemented. When viewed fromthe perspective of such interdependencies, it is difficult to see how management consultantscould reasonably withhold their best advice as to the desirability of the particular ends thattheir clients have specified (the content of the organisational change), in the presence ofproblematic means (the processes of organisational change) and an unfavourable contextwithin which to implement them, especially if these might give rise to costs that the endsspecified by the client would not justify.

The above five propositions about management consulting may appear to be a matter ofplain common sense and applicable, with appropriate adjustments, to the function of anyprofessional person. Not all of them, however, can simply be taken for granted. In relation tothe first of these propositions, for example, clients sometimes appoint management consul-tants, not because they are uncertain how to act, but because they want external experts tolegitimise in the minds of other organisation members the action that they have alreadydecided to take (Sturdy et al. 2009). It will be argued later that, while this may be a commonpractice, it is not an ethical one. The second of these propositions, however, relating to clients‘distrusting [their] own capacity to decide’ (Aristotle 1934, p.137) highlights a key differencebetween management consulting and the established professions that has ethical implications.While clients may distrust their capacity to decide because they lack the necessary knowledgeand expertise to make a well-informed decision, their self-distrust may equally stem purelyfrom a sense of anxiety or lack of confidence. In other words, the benefits that clients seekfrom their management consultants may consist of reassurance and moral support rather thanaccreditable knowledge and expertise (Sturdy 1997). Whereas patients might reasonablyexpect their doctors to act upon an established body of knowledge, management consultantsdo not and – by virtue of the nature of their work – could not have access to such a body ofknowledge. Several consequences flow from this, which distinguish management consultingfrom the established professions. There is no generally accepted system of regulation of


management consultants (Greiner and Ennsfellner 2010; Harvey et al. 2017; Poulfelt 1997).Management consultants must engage in organisational politics in order to effect change since,in the absence of a body of knowledge through which particular management actions can bevalidated, intervention in organisational change involves participation in organisational politicsin order to secure acceptance of new ideas (Schein 1988). Management consultants must beactive in managing their clients’ impressions of themselves and of their work in the absence ofobjective means of assessing them (Clark and Salaman 1998). Management consultantsperform a diverse range of roles, and have a diverse range of relationships with their clients,which is associated with their clients’ perceptions of the extent of their access to scarce,specialist knowledge (O’Mahoney and Markham 2013; Schein 1997). These distinctivecharacteristics of management consulting are elaborated below.

It might be argued that, just as the end of medicine is health, and the function of the doctoris to cure patients, so the end of management consulting is effective organisationalperformance, and the function of the management consultant to facilitate improvement inorganisational performance. Indeed Schein (1988) specifically suggests the doctor-patientrelationship as one model for management consulting. The doctor-patient model, however,assumes the existence of a generally accepted body of knowledge upon which the managementconsultant will rely in formulating objective advice and plans of action. O’Mahoney andMarkham (2013, p.11) highlight the definition of management consultancy adopted by theUK’s Management Consultancies Association, which embodies this assumption:

The creation of value for organisations, through the application of knowledge, tech-niques and assets, to improve business performance. This is achieved through therendering of objective advice and/or the implementation of business solutions.

The superficial similarity, however, of the function of the management consultant to that of thedoctor cannot be accepted so readily. In the absence of a generally accepted body ofmanagement consultancy knowledge, management consultants’ claims to specialist knowledgeare largely unverifiable (Fincham 1999; Visscher 2006). Management consulting is widelydescribed as a knowledge-intensive industry (Alvesson 2000), and the use of knowledgemanagement systems is a central feature of management consulting firms’ practices and abasis of competition between them (Hansen et al. 1999). The nature of that knowledge,however, is wholly different from the kind of scientific knowledge that underpins the practiceof medicine. Whereas scientists seek knowledge about whether particular propositions are trueor false, managers seek relevant and timely knowledge that will help them take practicaldecisions upon which they must act (Kieser and Leiner 2009). Whereas, for example, scientificknowledge of what is true or false in the areas medicine or engineering has great practicalvalue, the same cannot in general be said of similar knowledge in the field of management(Kieser and Leiner 2009). Some management scholars advocate evidence-based management,which draws inter alia upon systematic reviews of the sort that medical researchers use to bringtogether the best evidence on medical questions (Briner et al. 2009). While systematic reviewsin the field of management science are rigorous, it typically takes many months to completethem, and their outputs are unlikely to be in a form that is immediately accessible or relevant toa manager with a decision to take. The timescales on which managers have to make decisions,and the practical focus of the information that they seek to help make them, constrain the likelyvalue of systematic reviews (or even of rapid evidence assessments) in a managementconsulting setting. Management consultancy firms use their knowledge management systemsto store and disseminate an evolving body of information based on their consulting experience,


including standardised methods, tools and techniques for carrying out particular kinds ofmanagement consultancy projects, and documentation of particular kinds of consultancyproject that the firm has completed (Werr and Stjernberg 2003). These systems enablemanagement consultants to capture learning from their current experiences as they encounternew problems and situations, and in consequence to be conversant with current managementdevelopments and trends, but that learning is not susceptible to the kind of rigorous review thatwould enable it to be embodied in a generally accepted corpus of scientific knowledge.

The absence of a generally accepted body of management consultancy knowledge hascontributed to the failure of attempts to regulate the management consulting industry (Glücklerand Ambrüster 2003; Harvey et al. 2017; Kirkpatrick et al. 2012). Greiner and Ennsfellner(2010) record a claim that simply being recruited by McKinsey & Co. is sufficient to conferprofessional status on a consultant, while Furusten (2013) argues that management consultan-cy is a modern form of profession whereby the claim to professional status depends largely onmarket acceptance. Clients have to determine for themselves whether or not to trust particularmanagement consultancy firms and their consultants, and there is no widely recognised systemof regulation upon which they can rely in determining where to place their trust.

In advancing the doctor-patient model, Schein (1988) draws attention to some of itslimitations. These include the likelihood that organisational politics may lead ‘patients’ todistort the information that they give to their ‘doctors’ in pursuit of purposes that may serve theinterests of individual organisation members but not those of the organisation as a whole. Itmight be argued that this limitation of the doctor-patient model is not a very serious one. Ifdoctors have made the best interventions that they can on the basis of the information that theirpatients have given them, they have performed their function conscientiously, and theirpatients’ failure to improve is to that extent their own voluntary choice. As Pettigrew (2012)points out, however, organisational change is a political process, involving the delegitimisationof old ideas and the legitimisation of new ones, in which organisation members may beexpected to pursue their own particular visions of what is good both for their organisation andfor themselves. There is neither truth nor falsehood in organisational change, only ideas thatare either adopted or discarded. Organisational politics cannot be dismissed as an incidentaldistraction in the pursuit of improved organisational performance. They are the very stuff oforganisational change, and management consultants have to engage with them if they are to bean effective force for organisational performance improvement.

The outputs of management consultancy are to a large extent intangible, and clients musttherefore rely heavily on subjective impressions to evaluate what their benefits may be(Alvesson et al. 2009; Fincham 1999). By contrast with medical science, there is no manage-ment science that can evaluate with any precision the effect that a particular managementconsultancy intervention has had. In the absence of objective means of demonstrating theircontribution, management consultants devote effort to managing the impressions that theirclients form of themselves and their work (Alvesson et al. 2009; Clark and Salaman 1998;Fincham 1999; Glückler and Ambrüster 2003; Werr and Styhre 2003; Wright and Kitay 2002).Sturdy (1997) argues that managers’ anxieties about the effects on their organisations and ontheir own careers of failing to keep up with current management thinking can be important inopening their minds to the impression that they need management consultancy support. Theappeal of particular management fashions may flourish in managers’ minds in the absence ofobjective means of appraising their value (Molloy and Whittington 2005; Wright et al. 2012).Glückler and Ambrüster (2003) highlight the importance of trust in clients’ decisions onappointing management consultants and, as a consequence, the importance for management


consultants of forming the impression in clients’ minds that they are to be relied upon andtrusted (Kitay and Wright 2004; Maister 1993). Consultants’ use of impression managementskills may be important in influencing clients to form a fair and reasonable view of whatmanagement consultancy interventions can do for them and it may equally, of course,influence them to adopt an unjustifiably favourable view (Clark and Salaman 1998).

There is great diversity in the kinds of work that management consultants perform and therelationships that arise between management consultants and their clients. O’Mahoney andMarkham (2013) observe, for example, that consultants’ roles include providing expert adviceand assistance to clients who lack the consultants’ expertise; acting as coaches or facilitatorswho help clients to identify and act upon the issues facing their organisations; formingfriendships with senior executives that involve relationships of mutual support and learning;being actors in organisational politics who assist their clients in winning political battles withtheir peers; and often simply providing ‘pairs of hands’ to perform work which the staff of theclient organisation are too busy to do. Management consultants may also have to interact withmany different types of clients in a large organisation. Schein (1997, pp. 202–203) identifiesseveral different client roles, including ‘contact clients’ who establish the initial relationshipwith the consultant, ‘intermediate clients’ who become involved only after that initial contacthas been made, ‘primary clients’ who are the managers with responsibility for addressing theissues with which the consultancy project is concerned, ‘unwitting clients’ whom the consul-tancy project will affect but who are unaware of this, ‘indirect clients’ who know they will beaffected but of whom the consultants are unaware, and ‘ultimate clients’ who have fundamen-tal interests in the consultancy project as stakeholders in it. In a long-running project a range ofdifferent people may perform client roles at various times, and even people who are actuallyopposed to the organisational change towards which the consultancy project is directed maybecome clients of it. Coalitions of managers who are either in favour of a particularorganisational change or opposed to it may enlist management consultants to support themin their cause (Alvesson et al. 2009). While the expertise of management consultants maysometimes give them power and influence over their clients, just as doctors may seem to havepower and influence over their patients, competition among management consultancy firms,questioning of consultants’ claims to specialist expertise, and sometimes the relatively lowlystatus of the work that they are asked to do, may place them in subservient roles and inducethem to accept long hours and other unfavourable conditions of work that employees of theclient organisation would not tolerate (Alvesson and Kärreman 2004; Alvesson and Robertson2006; Fincham 1999; Kitay and Wright 2004; Nikolova et al. 2009).

Against the background of the above discussion, the function of the management consultantmight be defined as being to:

Advise and assist clients, as a practical, intelligent partner in their decision-makingprocesses, on the detailed specification, and means of attaining, important objectivesthat the clients wish to achieve, in circumstances in which the clients feel uncertain howto act.

The good management consultant will fulfil this function to an excellent standard. It followsfrom the foregoing discussion that, as a practical, intelligent partner, the management consul-tant may be expected to be knowledgeable about current management trends that are relevantto the clients’ issues, and experienced in the kinds of management consultancy interventionsought by the clients. The management consultant would not normally, however, be expectedto have access to scientific knowledge - or any other generally accepted body of knowledge -


of direct relevance to the intervention to be made that could assure its success in the clients’particular circumstances. It also follows that the management consultant would support theclients in making decisions and acting upon them, whatever the source of the clients’uncertainty, for example both as an adviser with specialist technical knowledge and as afacilitator with coaching skills. In order to perform their role, management consultants mustcommand the trust of their clients in the absence of access to any generally accepted body ofmanagement consultancy knowledge. The consequences for the ethical obligations of themanagement consultant of the distinctive characteristics of management consulting discussedabove are considered in the following section.

How Should a Management Consultant Act in Order to Be a GoodManagement Consultant?

Aristotle (1934) provides a catalogue of the intellectual and moral virtues that apply to peoplein general. He distinguishes sharply between the intellectual and the moral virtues, in that theintellectual virtues may be acquired through instruction and experience, whereas we acquirethe moral virtues through habituation. Pellegrino (1995, 2002) draws upon Aristotle’s work indefining virtues that should be expected of medical practitioners. Comparison of the functionand the virtues of medical practitioners with those of the management consultant offers a basisfor assessing how far the virtues of management consultancy are similar to or distinct fromthose of medicine as an example of an established profession. Such a comparison, drawingupon Pellegrino’s analysis, is set out below, together with a proposition as to what the virtuesof the management consultant should be. In discussing the moral virtues, Aristotle advanceshis doctrine of the mean, which proposes that the moral virtues should be regarded as formingpart of a triad consisting of the moral virtue itself and two opposed vices – one of deficiencyand one of excess – just as liberality (eleutheriotes) may be associated with the opposed vicesof meanness (aneleutheria) and prodigality (asotia). The potential value of this doctrine of themean, for the management consultant who is shooting for ethical practice, is also discussedbelow.

The Virtues of the Management Consultant

Pellegrino (1995) defines the function of the medical practitioner, as a basis fordefining virtue in that profession, in terms of three characteristics of the doctor-patient relationship. The characteristics that he defines are, first, patients’ establishmentof themselves as such by declaring that they believe that they are ill; second, themedical practitioners’ promise that they have the knowledge to help the patients andwill use that knowledge in the patients’ interests; and third, the medical practitioners’active, knowledge-based intervention to cure the patients. The relevance to managementconsulting of Pellegrino’s propositions as to virtue in the medical profession dependson the similarities and differences between management consulting and the medicalprofession in respect of the relationship between the client and the helper. The charac-teristics of the doctor-patient and management consultant-client relationship are com-pared in Table 1.

Management consultants’ relationships with their clients differ from those of doctors inseveral ways. Their clients in any consultancy engagement are likely to be numerous, and


divergent in their expectations and desires in respect of the relationship. The clients’ reasonsfor appointing consultants may stem from their attraction to a fashionable but unverified set ofideas about how businesses should be run rather than, or as well as, a specific opportunity orthreat facing their organisation. Management consultants make use of information about howto intervene in clients’ organisations that is based on their firm’s contemporary or recentexperience with other clients. This information is likely to be proprietary, may be subject torestrictions of use for reasons of client confidentiality and, while up to date, is unlikely to havebeen verified scientifically or to be susceptible to assessment in relation to any generallyaccepted body of knowledge.

This comparative analysis suggests certain differences between the doctor-patient andmanagement consultant-client relationship as to what constitutes virtue in each. Pellegrino(1995, 2002) advances a number of propositions as to the virtues of a doctor in the light of hisanalysis of the function of the medical practitioner, which are similar to propositions thatPellegrino (1989) advances elsewhere in respect of other established professions, including thelaw. These propositions are set out in Table 2, alongside a summary of ways in which thevirtues of a management consultant might differ from them as a consequence of differences intheir respective functions, and the generic virtues advanced by Aristotle (1934) that haveinformed Pellegrino’s analysis.

This comparative analysis of human virtues in general, the specific virtues of doctors, andthe applicability of the virtues of doctors in management consulting, highlights several distinctethical characteristics of management consulting. First, although superior knowledge andexpertise may sometimes place management consultants in a position of power relative totheir clients, this is by no means always the case (Sturdy 1997). Moreover, unlike doctors’patients, clients have realistic choices that they may make as to whether to employ consultants

Table 1 Comparison between doctor-patient and management consultant-client relationships

Relationshipcharacteristics

Doctor-patient Management consultant-client

Establishing patient’s/client’s status as such

• Each patient is an individual• The patient self-declares as ill• Perceived symptoms of illness

underpin the self-declaration

• Clients may be numerous and diverse• Clients specify either problems or

improvement opportunities to beaddressed

• Ideas emerging in the business world ingeneral, or ideas arising specifically inthe client organisation, may underpinthe specification

Doctor’s/managementconsultant’s promise

• There is a body of science-basedmedical knowledge in which thedoctor is a qualified practitioner

• The doctor promises to use thatknowledge in the patient’s interest

• There is a body of knowledge based onthe individual consultancy firm’s clientexperience, with which themanagement consultant is familiar

• The management consultant promises touse this experience-based knowledge,subject to any restrictions arising fromcommercial confidentiality, in the cli-ents’ interest

Doctor’s/ managementconsultant’sknowledge-based inter-vention

• The doctor treats the patient• The treatments used are based on

generally accepted medical science

• The management consultant intervenesin the client organisation

• The interventions used are informed bythe management consultancy firm’sclient experience


at all and, if so, which ones. Second, in an organisation of any size, management consultantsmay engage with large numbers of clients with divergent views and interests so that, bycontrast with the situation of individual patients, determining what outcome will be for thegood of the clients is complex. Moreover, while management consultants may be expected toempathise with their clients in their concerns, this expectation is weaker than in the case ofdoctors, because of the number and diversity of their clients, and the typically less direct effectof their concerns on their personal well-being. Third, management consultants enter intocommercial contracts with their clients through which the interests of both parties may beserved, and in these circumstances management consultants do not face the same obligation to‘go the extra mile’ for their clients, irrespective of financial gain in return, that doctors mightfeel in circumstances in which their patients need more than the usual service. Fourth,management consultants necessarily rely on unscientific knowledge (Nikolova et al. 2009;Wright et al. 2012) so, providing the extent to which clients can rely on the effectiveness oftheir consultants’ help is made transparent, it is reasonable for them to intervene in clients’organisations despite having less certain knowledge of the likely outcome than would beobligatory in the medical profession. There are, at the same time, several significant similar-ities. First, management consultants must earn the trust of their clients, and must perform theirwork in the way that they undertake to their clients that they will perform it. Second, they must

Table 2 Aristotle’s generic virtues, the doctor’s virtues, and limitations in relation management consulting

Aristotle’s virtues Doctor’s virtues (Pellegrino1995)

Limitations for the management consultant

Prudence (phronesis) Thoughtful, knowledge-basedconsideration of how best tohelp the patient

Consultants rely on uncertain, emergent andsometimes socially constructedknowledge

Justice (dikaiosyne) – Justice as‘the good of others’(Aristotle 1934, p.261)

Faithfulness to the promise madeto the patient

The relative invulnerability of the clientsand the commercial nature of therelationship limits the scope and intensityof consultants’ obligation

Justice (dikaiosyne) – Justice aswhat is ‘equal or fair’(Aristotle 1934, p. 257)

Providing in full everything thatis owed to the patient

Consultants must fulfil their contractualobligations in full but have no duty toexceed them

Acting with the intention to dogood to the patient

Determining what is for the good of theclients may be complicated by thenumber and diversity of the clients

Liberality (eleutheriotes) Never prioritising the doctor’sinterests above the patient’s

Consultants’ interests should not beprioritised above the clients’

Courage (andreia) Accepting the physical and otherrisks that may be involved intreating the patient

Consultants should accept reasonablereputational or legal risks to take boldaction in the interests of the client

Friendliness (philia) Empathising with the patient’scondition

The number and diversity of the clientsweakens the empathy that can be shownto any one of them; empathising mayextend to participating in organisationalpolitics to achieve particular ends in theclients’ overall interests

Truthfulness (aletheia) Being truthful about how far thedoctor can help the patient

Consultants must be truthful about theircapabilities, but the limitations ofmanagement consultancy knowledgemake it reasonable for consultants tointervene in circumstances where theoutcome may be uncertain


approach their consultancy projects with a clear intent to do good for their clients. Third, theymust not give priority to their own interests over those of their clients in carrying out theirconsultancy projects. Fourth, they should be willing to take reasonable risks for the good oftheir clients by intervening boldly where necessary when that might expose them to moderatereputational and legal risks. In the light of this analysis, the virtues that a good managementconsultant might be expected to display are those set out in Table 3.

Aiming for the Mean

Aristotle’s (1934) doctrine of the mean provides a basis for elaborating the virtues of themanagement consultant in greater detail, and providing some guidance as to how themanagement consultant can shoot for ethical practice. Aristotle (1934, p.99) suggests thatmoral virtue is a disposition in respect of feelings that is a mean between two vicious extremes,so that, for example:

In regard to giving and getting money, the mean is Liberality; the excess and deficiencyare Prodigality and Meanness, but the prodigal man and the mean man exceed and fall

Table 3 Proposed virtues of the management consultant

Aristotle’s virtues Proposed virtues of the managementconsultant

Associated aspects of the managementconsultant’s function

Prudence (phronesis) Exercising prudence (phronesis) in theirwork for their clients, based on thetraining and experience necessary tocomplete the work effectively

Applying knowledge and expertiseregarding current managementpractices and trends that are relevantto clients’ issues, recognising that thisknowledge is uncertain, emergent andmay be socially constructed

Justice (dikaiosyne) –Justice as what is‘equal or fair’ (Aristot-le 1934,p. 257)

Fulfilling in full the promises embodiedin their contracts with their clients

Earning the status of a trusted partner,using impression management skillsto create a fair view of the work donein the clients’ minds

Acting in the overall interests of theirclients

Providing the best advice and assistancein matters that are important to clientsin accordance with contractualrequirements, taking into account thenumber and diversity of clients served

Liberality (eleutheriotes) Never giving priority to their ownfinancial or other interests over thoseof their clients

Never seeking to do work that will notbenefit their clients, nor to receivemore than a fair return for their work

Courage (andreia) Taking considered risks in theirconsultancy interventions in theinterests of their clients

Accepting reasonable reputational andlegal risks in order to help achieveclients’ important objectives

Friendliness (philia) Engaging actively with their clients andtheir interests

Understanding and engaging with thesources of clients’ uncertainty, ifrequired by participating in the clients’organisational politics

Truthfulness (aletheia) Explaining clearly to their clients theextent and limitations of their abilityto help them

Only undertaking consultancy projectswhen in possession of the necessaryknowledge and experience,recognising the limitations ofmanagement consultancy knowledge


short in opposite ways to one another: the prodigal exceeds in giving and is deficient ingetting, whereas the mean man exceeds in getting and is deficient in giving.

While giving this general guidance, he acknowledges that some acts, such as theft and murder,are always wrong, and no amount of striving for a moderate amount of thievery or murder-ousness can set matters right. It might be said that the notion of excess – of acquisitiveness orof violence – are bound up in those acts.

Losin (1987) draws attention to Aristotle’s reference to the mean ‘relative to us’, arguingfrom this that the determination of where the mean lies depends upon the particular individualconcerned. Thus, in aiming for liberality, management consultants who are by nature verygrasping, that is, deficient in liberality (eleutheriotes), face the opposite challenge to those whoare by nature neglectful about money, that is, excessive in liberality (eleutheriotes). Brown(1997) argues, however, that this takes the phrase ‘relative to us’ too far, and that Aristotlesimply means ‘relative to us as human beings’. In other words, a person of moral virtue wouldlocate the mean where someone possessed of the intellectual virtue of prudence (phronesis)would locate it.

Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean has often been challenged. Hursthouse (1980–81) arguesthat some of Aristotle’s virtues are simply matters of judgement and not dispositions in respectof feelings at all. Thus, she suggests Aristotle’s virtue of greatness of soul (megalopsychia),said to lie at a mean between vanity (chaunotes) and smallness of soul (mikropsychia), isessentially a matter of exercising good judgement as to one’s worth. Moreover, Hursthouse(1980–81) argues that while some virtues may, incidentally, be capable of being described interms of deficiency or excess, they are in essence matters of having the right disposition inrespect of a feeling and not of hitting a mean between opposites. Thus, she suggests thatcourage (andreia) is in essence a matter of having the right disposition in respect of confi-dence, and the fact that it is possible to identify deficiency and excess in respect of it, that is,cowardice (deilia) and rashness (thrasos), is purely incidental. Moreover, Hursthouse (1980–81) points out the difficulties of providing satisfactory definitions of deficiencies and excesses,for example, there is a question of whether people who are guilty of cowardice (deilia) feel feartoo intensively, too often, towards the wrong objects, or on the wrong occasions.

Others, however, argue that Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean has value as general guidancefor someone who is aiming to act ethically, as for an archer who is seeking to shoot in the rightdirection (Koehn 2012; Losin 1987). These writers argue against regarding the mean as aprecise point, capable of being located quantitatively between opposed vices. Rather they see itas a general area that is more or less right, and lies between too much and too little. The archermay err in a multiplicity of ways, but each error may yet reasonably be thought of in terms ofdeficiency or excess (Koehn 2012). Contemporary writers on business ethics have drawn uponAristotle’s doctrine of the mean as a source of guidance, for example, in understanding whyunethical behaviour occurs in organisations (Kaptein 2017). It is argued below that the doctrineof the mean, understood as guidance in locating more or less where ethical practice lies, haspractical value for the management consultant who seeks to be an ethical practitioner. Theways in which the doctrine of the mean might inform decision-making on ethical practice inrespect of the virtues identified in Table 3 are discussed below, setting aside the virtue ofprudence (phronesis) which, as an intellectual virtue, Aristotle (1934) sets apart from thedoctrine. A summary of these virtues of the good management consultant, alongside theopposed vices between which they lie and which may serve as practical guidance for themanagement consultant in shooting in the right direction, is set out in Table 4.


Justice: Fulfilling in Full the Promises Embodied in their Contracts with their Clients;Acting in the Overall Interests of their Clients

Aristotle (1934, p.261) says that the word justice (dikaiosyne) is used in two distinct senses. Inthe first, he defines it as ‘the good of others’, and as the whole of virtue and not just a part of it.In this broad sense, justice (dikaiosyne) can be seen as akin to Pellegrino’s (1995) notion of thedoctor’s promise to the patient. Management consultants are not expected to make a promiseof the same scope and intensity as that expected of doctors, because their clients will notnormally be in the same position of vulnerability as doctors’ patients, and because normallythe relationship between consultant and client is more equal and is established on a strictlycommercial basis. In the second sense, however, Aristotle (1934, p.289) aligns the virtue ofjustice (dikaiosyne) with his doctrine of the mean, observing that ‘just conduct is a meanbetween doing and suffering injustice, for the former is to have too much and the latter to havetoo little’. Young (1988) argues that injustice (adikia), in this particular sense, is whensomeone takes something that is more than their due from another to whom it belongs; thisdistinguishes injustice (adikia) from meanness (aneleutheria), where the interests of anotherparty to whom something is owed are not in question.

Aristotle’s concept of justice (dikaiosyne) in this second, particular sense, as a virtue thatmotivates people to seek out just distributions of good things and to shun unjust distributions,seems relevant to the management of relationships between consultants and their clients. Theconcept is, nevertheless, problematic. Williams (1981) points out that unjust acts may stemfrom a variety of different motives, such as fear, jealousy or greed, and this tends to underminethe claim that justice (dikaiosyne) can be distinguished as a virtue of character in its own right.Urmson (1973) draws attention to the difficulty that if justice (dikaiosyne) is a mean betweentwo extremes there must, improbably, be a vice of deficiency whereby people commit injustice

Table 4 The management consultant’s moral virtues as means

The management consultant’smoral virtues

Management consulting virtue triads

Deficiency Mean Excess

Justice (dikaiosyne): Fulfilling infull the promises embodied intheir contracts with their clients;Acting in the overall interests oftheir clients

Under-servicing the client Delivering to promise Over-servicingthe client

Liberality (eleutheriotes): Nevergiving priority to their ownfinancial or other interests overthose of their clients

Grasping Business-like Uncommercial

Courage (andreia): Takingconsidered risks in theirconsultancy interventions in theinterests of their clients

Over-cautious Innovatory Over-bold

Friendliness (philia): Engagingactively with their clients andtheir interests

Aloof Independent-minded Partial

Truthfulness (aletheia): Explainingclearly to their clients the extentand limitations of their ability tohelp them

Understated Truthful Exaggerated


(adikia) by taking less than their due. Urmson (1973) points out, however, that Aristotle’s lineof argument becomes somewhat less problematic when shorn of the Christian notions ofmorality that suffuse the English words, including ‘justice’, into which his work is translated.For Aristotle, the attainment of happiness (eudaimonia), by which he refers to all the goodthings to which a virtuous person may aspire (Ackrill 1974), is the yardstick against whichactions should be appraised. In these circumstances, giving up to others good things to whichyou are entitled, and they are not, might seem to be an act that misses the mark of justice(dikaiosyne), even if it cannot reasonably be regarded as an outright injustice (adikia). In spiteof the awkwardness of Aristotle’s thesis, his ideas provide a reasonable, practical guide in theparticular circumstances of management consultants as participants in an equal commercialcontract with their clients.

Management consultants should fulfil their obligations in full, and must act for thegood of their clients, neither under-servicing nor over-servicing them in respect of theircontractual obligations. Sometimes management consultants fail in this because they limitthe scope and quality of the work that they do in the interests of keeping within budget ormaximising their profit; for example consultants often include transfer of learning to theclient organisation’s staff as part of their proposals to their clients, but subsequentlydeprioritise this activity as budgets tighten, so as to complete the more visible tasks towhich contractually they can more easily be held to account (Sturdy et al. 2009). Some-times they commit the opposite error by over-servicing their clients, for example bysuccumbing to pressures to provide services that lie beyond the scope of their contracts(Harvey et al. 2017). Unlike doctors on Pellegrino’s (1995) analysis, management con-sultants have no responsibility to go beyond what is contractually expected of them. In ajust relationship, both consultants and their clients will each receive what is their due,neither more nor less, from the contractual relationship between them.

Liberality: Never Giving Priority to their Own Financial or Other Interests over thoseof their Clients

It is without question that management consultancy is a business, and management consultantshave to take a commercial approach to their work if they are to stay in business (Kipping andClark 2012). Yet many writers have suggested that management consultants tend to be over-fond of money (Bronnenmayer and Wirtz 2016). For example, they are often perceived to beworking towards a follow-on contract with their clients as soon as they have been appointed,and as angling their advice so as to please those managers within their client organisations whocan give them business (Bloch 1998; Sturdy et al. 2009). The contribution of an excessiveappetite for management consulting revenues to the demise of Arthur Andersen, at the timeone of the world’s largest management consultancy firms, has been widely documented(Carroll and Shaw 2013; O’Mahoney and Markham 2013).

Maister (1993) observes that two central features of the business strategy of any profes-sional service firm are building strong client relationships, and achieving a reasonably highdegree of leverage, that is, a reasonably high ratio of consultants to partners. Both of thesefeatures are intimately connected with the way in which management consulting firms makemoney. Forging strong client relationships increases the chances of repeat business, whichreduces both the cost of selling business, by reducing or eliminating competition, and ofdelivering consultancy projects, by enabling consultants to re-use knowledge gained fromprevious assignments (Kitay and Wright 2004). Management consultants face pressures to


align their advice with the preferences of particular clients because of the commercial value oftheir relationships with those clients (Czarniawska and Mazza 2003). In order to achieve a highdegree of leverage, management consultancy firms seek to routinise their knowledge andmethods, and to make them available to consultants across their organisations through theirknowledge management systems. Routinisation of knowledge may enable consultants tobenefit their clients in ways that would be impossible otherwise; for example, routinisingactivities that do not require original thought may release more consultancy time for effectiveaction on those that do (Werr et al. 1997). Too often, however, in the economic interests oftheir firms, management consultants provide only standardised outputs to clients who expect atailored service (Appelbaum and Steed 2005; Wright et al. 2012).

Quite apart from extreme cases such as that of Arthur Andersen, there are many instancesin which management consultants are found to take on work for the sake of the revenuesassociated with them in circumstances in which the function of the management consultant,as defined above, will not be performed. For example, on Aristotle’s account, consultation isconfined to important matters where the clients distrust their own capacity to decide, butHagenmeyer (2007) points out that in numerous instances this condition of value for moneyfrom the consultancy relationship is not met. He points out, for example, that managers in theclient organisation may appoint management consultants simply in order to seem to be doingsomething about a problem when in fact they are not. They may have already decided whatthey want to do, but nevertheless appoint management consultants in the expectation thatthey will present that decision as if it were independent management consultancy advice, inorder win over resistant colleagues or have the consultants take the blame for an unpopulardecision (Alvesson et al. 2009; Wright and Kitay 2002). Management consultants may angletheir advice so as to advance the personal agenda and careers of particular managers who arein a position to award business contracts to the consultants (Czarniawska and Mazza 2003;Glückler and Ambrüster 2003; Sturdy et al. 2009). Management consultants sometimes preyupon their clients’ uncertainties and anxieties, about their organisations and their own careers,in order to persuade them to buy consultancy services that offer little benefit, includingservices involving the latest management fashions and fads (Sturdy 1997). In such situationsmanagement consultants show a deficiency of liberality (eleutheriotes) relative to the virtuesto be expected of consultants fulfilling their proper function. As Exton (1982, p.218)observes in his discussion of the ethics of management consulting, ‘when the motivationof monetary gain is primary, limitations are placed upon the exercise of all the resourcesavailable to us, and excellence suffers’. Management consultants must of necessity becommercially astute, but they face many temptations to exploit their clients for money thatthey must resist.

Courage: Taking Considered Risks in their Consultancy Interventions in the Interestsof their Clients

Management consultants are frequently seen as disrupters of the status quo, and are valued ascontributors to innovation (Clegg et al. 2004). Yet innovation involves risks for both clientsand consultants (Wright et al. 2012). There is a risk that new ways of doing things may notwork in practice, leading to consequential reputational damage to both clients and consultants.For the consultants, irrespective of the effectiveness of an innovation in practice, clients maybe unwilling to adopt a disruptive innovation and reject the consultants who propose it. Theextent to which management consultants contribute to innovation in practice is sometimes


questioned in the literature. Sturdy et al. (2009) observe that the role of managementconsultants may be simply to legitimise an innovation on which at least some managers inthe client organisation may already have agreed. While this may contribute to innovation, inthat legitimisation by an outside expert may help to overcome resistance to a proposedinnovation, only limited credit can be given to management consultants as innovators forplaying such a role. Wright et al. (2012) argue that much of the innovation produced throughmanagement consultancy interventions is, in fact, highly standardised in nature, even thoughconsultants themselves often emphasise the innovative character of their work. Many suchinterventions involve standardising a client organisation’s practices in line with establishedindustry ‘best practices’. For example, in implementations of new IT systems, the role of themanagement consultants is often to achieve a ‘vanilla implementation’. This involves theconsultants assisting the client organisation in aligning its business processes with the ‘bestpractice’ business processes that have been designed into the software package being imple-mented, thereby avoiding the costs of customising the software so as to adapt it to the clientorganisation’s individual, preferred ways of doing things. Such organisational change falls farshort of ground-breaking innovation, unless viewed solely from the narrow perspective of aparticular client organisation. Moreover, management consultancy firms use knowledge man-agement processes and systems to establish and standardise upon particular managementconsultancy methods (Hansen et al. 1999). They develop and disseminate standardisedmethods throughout their organisations as a way of managing their costs; the availability ofstep-by-step guides to standard methods in firms’ knowledge management systems facilitatesdeployment on their projects of less experienced and less costly consultants than wouldotherwise be necessary. Yet this practice limits the scope for innovative management consul-tancy interventions that are tailored to individual clients’ particular circumstances.

An innovatory management consultant will aim for a mean between, on the one hand,untried innovation that may not work, and bold innovation that may generate so muchresistance as to be unimplementable and, on the other hand, overreliance on cautious,standard solutions and management consulting methods. The indications in the literaturethat management consultants sometimes seek to create the impression in their clients’minds of attractive innovativeness, while actually providing them with highlystandardised outputs and outcomes, suggest that the principal danger is that consultancyinterventions will be over-cautious.

Friendliness: Engaging Actively with their Clients and their Interests

Forming strong client relationships is a central element of management consultancy firms’business strategies (Maister 1993). It is widely recognised that ‘personal chemistry’ and likingbetween clients and their management consultants is a crucial factor; clients will not work withconsultants whom they personally do not like (Nikolova et al. 2015). Management consultantsseek to become the friends of senior managers within client organisations who are in a positionto give them business. For some management consultants, this extends to aligning theirrecommendations with the known views of such senior managers, making them look goodin front of their colleagues, and helping them to advance their personal agenda, or indeed theircareers, within their organisations (Chelliah and Davis 2010; Nikolova et al. 2015; Sturdy1997; Werr and Styhre 2003). It may involve consultants participating in coalitions withparticular groups of managers in a client organisation in pursuit of their political objectives(Alvesson et al. 2009). Management consultants’ liminal status, whereby they are neither


complete insiders nor complete outsiders of the client organisation, creates opportunities forthem to meet particular client managers and build relationships with them outside the confinesof day-to-day business relationships, for example in business dinners (Czarniawska and Mazza2003; Sturdy et al. 2006).

These observations suggest that management consultants often lack independent-mindedness in their dealings with their clients in the interests of attracting and retainingbusiness. While partiality - as the error of excess in respect of the moral virtue of friendliness(philia) - might be deplored, aloofness - as the error of deficiency - equally involves dangers.Pettigrew (2012) points out that organisational change is a political process, involving thedelegitimisation of old ideas and the legitimisation of new ones. In these circumstances amanagement consultant who wishes to be effective cannot remain entirely aloof from thepolitical action and conflict that is associated with change. In reflecting on his ownmanagement consultancy practice, Schein (1997, p. 213) says that he may ‘help a managerto win a political battle over another manager’, but only in circumstances in which it would befor the benefit of his ultimate clients. Schein here seems to be aiming for the mean in respect offriendliness (philia), neither standing aloof from the fray nor showing partisanship in his owninterests.

Truthfulness: Explaining Clearly to their Clients the Extent and Limitations of theirAbility to Help them

Writers on management consulting often argue that impression management lies at theheart of management consulting (Alvesson et al. 2009; Clark and Salaman 1998; Fincham1999; Glückler and Ambrüster 2003; Werr and Styhre 2003). The intangible nature ofmanagement consulting, and the consequently subjective nature of clients’ appraisal ofmanagement consultants when considering whether to appoint them, and the subjectivenature also of clients’ evaluations of what their consultants have achieved for them,explain the importance of impression management (Wright and Kitay 2002). Clients’reliance on their subjective impressions of management consultants’ capabilities andachievements creates conditions in which consultants may behave opportunistically, bypromoting an exaggerated sense of their value to their clients. Clark and Salaman (1998)suggest that management consultants may behave manipulatively, presenting a front-stageimage of excellent performance that masks a less than excellent back-stage reality.Situations in which management consultants may represent a standardised, ‘off-the-shelf’solution to their clients as being innovative and tailored to the clients’ unique circum-stances provide an example of how this might occur (Appelbaum and Steed 2005; Wrightet al. 2012). This is not to say, however, that the impressions that management consultantscreate are necessarily false or exaggerated, or indeed that impression management is anillegitimate activity (Lalonde and Gilbert 2016; Provis 2010). Management consultantsmay have to be active in using their impression management skills in order to create anaccurate impression of themselves and their work in the minds of their clients and otherstakeholders, for example when seeking to persuade a resistant audience of the necessity toadopt a particular course of action in its own interests.

Impression management has become a core management consultancy skill. In thesecircumstances it is as much in clients’ interests that management consultants should notunderstate their capabilities and the value of their ideas as it is that they should not exaggeratethem. The most capable consultants may be rejected in favour of less capable consultants as a


result of poor presentation to clients that understates their capabilities, while clients may rejectthe best ideas in response to a poor presentation that understates their value. Consultants wholack the necessary skills to undertake a particular project may persuade clients to appoint themwith a slick presentation that exaggerates their capabilities, while clients may accept imprac-ticable ideas in response to persuasive presentation that exaggerates their value. Deficiency inrespect of truthfulness denies the best consultants the work that they should be awarded, whileexcess may damage both the consultants’ and the clients’ reputations.

Where Does the Boundary Lie between the Ethical Responsibilitiesof the Management Consultant and those of the Client and OtherStakeholders?

The actions of management consultants have considerable influence, not only on the ways inwhich particular client organisations manage themselves and perform, but also on society atlarge through their influence, for example, on the organisation of government institutions andon the vocabulary of management decision-making (O’Mahoney and Markham 2013). Whileindividual management consultants clearly have a responsibility for the outcomes to which thatinfluence leads, other stakeholders also have responsibilities. Either the government or,collectively, the management consultancy industry itself, might regulate the ways in whichmanagement consultants operate so as to protect clients and society at large from unethicalpractice. Individual clients might adopt rigorous selection processes so as to appoint the bestmanagement consultants for the work that they need done; they might include specifications intheir contracts with their management consultants that are designed to ensure that consultancyprojects meet their organisational needs; and they might monitor their consultants’ perfor-mance against those specifications so as to hold them to account for fulfilling their contractualobligations in full. The senior management teams of management consultancy firms also mightput in place processes and systems to ensure ethical behaviour on the part of the managementconsultants whom they employ, both as a matter of good corporate citizenship and in order tomaintain and develop their reputations with their clients.

Management consulting, like the established professions, is a knowledge-based industry(Furusten 2013). By contrast with the established professions, however, the knowledge uponwhich it relies is uncertain, emergent, often socially constructed, the property of the individualmanagement consultancy firm that deploys it, and therefore not assessable against anygenerally accepted body of management consultancy knowledge (Nikolova et al. 2009). Ithas been suggested that management consulting is a modern form of profession, in which theonly test of membership of that profession is market acceptance (Furusten 2013). Attempts tointroduce a universal system of regulation of management consulting, in the manner that hasbeen adopted by the established professions, have always been resisted by the managementconsultancy industry and have been unsuccessful (Greiner and Ennsfellner 2010; Harvey et al.2017; Kirkpatrick et al. 2012). This reflects the fundamental barriers to regulation that arisefrom the nature of management consultancy knowledge (Alvesson and Johansson 2002). Howcould a regulator determine whether or not management consultants had done their work to anacceptable, professional standard when there can be no general agreement as to the body ofknowledge that they should be applying to their work?

Clients must to some extent observe the principle, caveat emptor. The projects thatconsultants undertake for their clients are governed by commercial contracts. Clients are free


to choose which management consultants to appoint to help them, and indeed whether or notto use their services at all. They can specify clearly in the contracts with their consultants whatthey expect their consultancy projects to produce for them and to achieve, and can monitortheir consultants’ compliance with those contracts. Yet there is a sharp distinction betweenproject management success and project success; the consultants may complete to the letterevery project task that the contract requires, yet the desired project outcomes may not beachieved (De Wit 1988). Moreover, whether or not the required outcomes that have beenspecified in a contract have actually been achieved typically can be assessed only on the basisof the clients’ subjective impressions (Wright and Kitay 2002). Without doubt there are stepsthat clients can take to improve their confidence in the value for money that they obtain fromtheir consultants. Some client organisations have been increasing the involvement of procure-ment specialists in selecting the management consultants who work for them, as a means ofintroducing more objective, criterion-based methods of selection (Werr and Pemer 2007).Clients might invest in tightening the processes for managing their contracts with managementconsultants. Clients might demand transparency from their consultants as to the evidence base,derived from their knowledge management systems, upon which they base their work. Yet thesubjective impressions that senior managers in client organisations form of their consultants isa material factor in how effectively they are likely to work with them (Chelliah and Davis2010). There are also limits to the investment that it would be worthwhile for clients to make incontract management, and in investigating the evidence base that supports their consultants’work.

In the absence of a generally accepted, formal system of regulation, and of objective meanswhereby clients can reliably appraise the contribution of their consultants, clients and otherstakeholders have to rely on the character of management consultants themselves. Aristotle(1934) says that human beings have a natural capacity for both the intellectual and the moralvirtues. Whereas the intellectual virtues can be developed through instruction and experience,however, the moral virtues are developed by habit. In the Greek city-state, it is the responsi-bility of law-givers to enact laws that will habituate people to moral virtue. Moral virtue is notsimply a matter for each individual; a human being ‘is by nature a social animal’ (Aristotle1934, p. 29), and the leaders of society have a responsibility for habituating those whom theylead to moral virtue. The leaders of management consulting firms similarly have a responsi-bility for habituating their consultants to ethical conduct. O’Mahoney (2011) argues that, so farfrom doing so, leaders of management consulting firms increasingly treat responsibility forethical conduct as a matter for individual consultants, while at the same time operatingperformance management systems that privilege commercial requirements above ethical ones.Codes of ethical practice are widespread in the consulting industry, but such codes are widelyrecognised as largely ineffectual (Allen and Davis 1993; O’Mahoney 2011). While manage-ment consulting firms set their consultants clear and specific targets for sales and utilisation(that is, the proportion of their time that consultants spend on work for which clients can bebilled), the ethical codes that they prescribe tend to be vague and general. It is natural in thesecircumstances for management consultants to pay closer attention to meeting the specificperformance targets upon which their careers depend than to observing vague and generalstrictures as to ethical practice. O’Mahoney (2011) suggests that management consulting firmsbenefit financially from these arrangements, which place accountability for any ethicalmisdemeanours upon the individual consultants involved rather than the firm as a whole. Ifmanagement consultants are to be habituated to ethical practice in their work, the leaders ofmanagement consulting firms have to institute management practices and systems, such as


systems of recognition and reward, that can realistically contribute to an organisational culturethat embodies strong ethical values. The literature suggests that these leaders have much to doif management consultants are to be fully committed to high standards of ethical practice, andif ethical concerns are not to be crowded out by pressures to meet financial performancetargets.

Conclusion

The function of management consultants is different in numerous ways from those of membersof the established professions. These differences stem in particular from the nature of man-agement consultancy knowledge. As a consequence of the unique characteristics of manage-ment consultancy knowledge, management consulting has no generally accepted system ofregulation; necessarily involves itself in its clients’ organisational politics; embodies manage-ment of clients’ impressions of its consultants as a core skill; and is implemented through avast array of different kinds of consultancy roles and consultant-client relationships. Thesedistinctions of function lead to ethical differences between management consultancy practiceand the practice of the established professions.

Because of the distinctive characteristics of management consulting, and the difficultiesinvolved in attempts to make objective assessments of the quality of management consultancywork, the character of individual management consultants is especially important in ensuringthat they are worthy of the trust of their clients and other stakeholders. Because of theimportance of the management consultant’s character, Aristotelian virtue ethics offer a prom-ising approach to considering ethical practice in management consulting. A particular strengthof Aristotle’s (1934) approach is that adopting ethical values is considered to be among themany good things that constitute a happy life, and not in conflict with the enjoyment of goodthings that people might reasonably desire. This stands in contrast with other approaches toethics, including ethical codes in management consulting, which tend to emphasise prohibi-tions of various kinds (Solomon 1992). These include, for example, prohibitions againstconflicts of interest, taking on work for which you do not have appropriate expertise andcapacity, and poaching clients’ staff; there is nothing here to which exception could reasonablybe taken, but the whole tenor is about what consultants should not do. Aristotle (1934) doesnot simply require you not to take more than your due, he positively enjoins you to take whatis your due. Aristotle’s (1934, p. 337) intellectual virtue of prudence (phronesis) enablespeople to ‘deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for [themselves] … what isadvantageous as a means to the good life in general’. This approach to ethics, therefore, is acall to human flourishing, not to puritanical abstention from the good things of life, and as suchis likely to have more traction than the lists of prohibitions embodied in typical ethical codes.

Aristotle (1934) anchors his approach to ethics to examination of the function that theindividual performs. While his project of determining the function of a human being, and thuswhat the virtues of a human being might be, remains problematic, it is a simpler matter todetermine what the function of a management consultant might be, and therefore whatconstitutes ethical practice in management consulting. The relationships between managementconsultants and their clients are often compared with the doctor-patient relationship. Analysisof the limitations of this comparison is instructive in identifying what is distinctive about thefunction of management consultants from the perspective of ethical practice. Managementconsultants’ clients in any consultancy engagement are likely to be numerous and divergent in


their expectations; their clients’ reasons for appointing them may arise from some tangiblebusiness threat or opportunity, but equally may stem from their attraction to, or anxiety aboutmissing out on, new, intangible business ideas or trends; and management consultants willdeploy their firms’ own proprietary, but unverifiable, knowledge in their client interventions.

Despite these limitations of the comparison, there are some points of similarity with thecircumstances and obligations of doctors from an ethical perspective as well as differences.Management consultants must earn the trust of their clients; they must approach theirconsultancy projects with a clear intent to do good for their clients; they must not give priorityto their own interests over those of their clients in carrying out their consultancy projects; andthey should be willing to take reasonable risks for the good of their clients by interveningboldly where necessary when that might expose them to moderate reputational and legal risks.The differences are, however, substantial. Although superior knowledge and expertise maysometimes place management consultants in a position of power relative to their clients, this isby no means always the case; clients have wide, realistic choices as to whether to employconsultants at all and, if so, which ones; management consultants may engage with largenumbers of clients with divergent views and interests in any project, giving rise to complexityin determining what outcome will be for the overall good of the clients; while managementconsultants may be expected to empathise to some extent with their clients in their concerns,the number and diversity of their clients, and the typically less direct effect of their concerns ontheir personal well-being, weakens this expectation in relation to any particular client; it is notonly proper but often necessary for management consultants to exert influence on clients byparticipating in their organisational politics; management consultants enter into commercialcontracts with their clients, and they have no duty to go beyond their contractual obligations inthe interests of their clients, in the way that doctors might be expected to do; and managementconsultants necessarily rely on unscientific knowledge, so it is reasonable for them to intervenein clients’ organisations despite uncertainties as to the outcome.

In the light of these comparisons with ethical practice in medicine, seven virtues thatmanagement consultants should have are proposed. While similar in form to some of those thatare appropriate to medical practitioners, the differences in circumstance between managementconsultant-client and doctor-patient relationships significantly affect the character of the ethicalresponsibilities that are associated with them. These virtues are: first, exercising prudence(phronesis) in their work for their clients, based on the training and experience necessary tocomplete the work effectively; second, fulfilling in full the promises embodied in theircontracts with their clients; third, acting in the overall interests of their clients; fourth, nevergiving priority to their own financial or other interests over those of their clients; fifth, takingconsidered risks in their consultancy interventions in the interests of their clients; sixth,engaging actively with their clients and their interests; and seventh explaining clearly totheir clients the extent and limitations of their ability to help them. Aristotle (1934) arguesthat every moral virtue forms part of a triad, encompassing also opposed vices of deficiencyand excess. While this doctrine of the mean has often been the subject of scholarly criticism, itis argued in this paper that the idea has practical value, providing that there is no insistence ona quantitative or very precise interpretation of it. For the management consultant who isstriving to shoot for ethical practice, a notion of what is deficient or excessive can be helpful asa practical guide. For this reason, this paper locates the six moral virtues that it proposes withinAristotelian triads.

There is ample evidence of poor ethical practice in management consulting, and anapproach that emphasises reliance on nurturing the moral character of management consultants


may seem unsatisfactory. The nature of management consultancy knowledge, and the depen-dency of management consulting on relationships and trust between particular managers andtheir consultants, places severe limitations on the scope for either effective regulation by aprofessional management consultancy body or for reliable contract management by clients.For Aristotle, ethical choices flow from the interplay between the moral virtues and theintellectual virtue of prudence (phronesis). In his view, people develop moral virtues throughhabituation and not through instruction, and habituation comes about through the actions of theleaders of society. The leaders of management consulting firms have much to do if theirconsultants are to commit themselves to high standards of ethical practice. There is a need for anew, more ethically mature kind of management consultancy firm. It is a target worth shootingfor.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest The author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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