Making sense of the consultant guru phenomenon

Management consultants from well-known consulting firms often play a vital role in setting “the fashions” and “trends” in the business world. It was proven that the hiring of consultants incentivise companies to imitate one another. They are likely to embrace what they perceive as the best practices in the industry. Among the best examples is the widely adopted ‘Multidivisional’ organization structure in the 1960s. At present, there are an extensive number of literatures which explain the rising popularity of management consulting industry and shed light on the phenomenon of management fads. There are two prominent images of management consultants: The innovator view and the legitimator view. The first view put forth the image of consultants as the pioneer of new management ideas while the latter view consultant as merely the legitimator of client practices. Undeniably, the reason why management consulting industry has found such success is because there is a strong demand for experts' advice. Yet, it should be highlighted that, irrespective of consultants’ efforts, all companies have certain objectives to achieve and they hire consultants in order to accomplish just that.