Consulting in Context: Legitimacy of Management Consultants in Public Administration and at Universities

Management consulting has spread to almost all institutional fields. While scholars have largely acknowledged consultants’ role in implementing and legitimising decisions (i.e., legitimation by consultants), less is known about how consultants themselves gain legitimacy (i.e., legitimation of consultants). New institutionalism suggests that legitimacy building refers to the broader institutional context in which consulting takes place and will therefore unfold differently in different fields. By following this reasoning and integrating the institutional work concept, we argue that active clients play an important role in legitimacy-building processes vis-à-vis external consultants. We use data from semi-structured interviews with 38 clients and 41 consultants in two fields beyond the traditional consulting business: public administration and universities. Our analysis shows that in both fields, management consultants source their legitimacy from a broad range of institutional values and processes. In public administration, they have to adapt to a bureaucratic organisation and hierarchy, which gives rise to field-specific interpretative patterns. At universities, consultants do not only have to account for the managerial and administrative thinking of universities’ administrations but also for academic perspectives and traditions in the organization. In both institutional fields, clients who are active in consulting processes co-construct consultants’ legitimacy. However, the role they take as consultants’ partners contrasts between the fields. This is indicated by differences in the way how the failure of a consulting project and its consequences for clients is perceived.