Influence of the Cooperation with Professional Consultants on the Improvement in the Effectiveness of the Enterpises

Contemporary enterprises functioning in a turbulent environment have to continuously adapt to new challenges. Thus it is necessary to adequately identify and analyze the signals coming from the environment, taking into account their influence on the current and future situation of the company as a whole, and also predicting on the basis of such signals the directions of the changes in the environment and core competences which condition the company’s functioning in the future. The problem is to what degree enterprises are able to identify the expectations of the environment and how quickly they can undertake some corrective actions through the processes of corporate learning. Substantial support in this area can be provided by professional consultants who, due to their knowledge and experience, back up their client’s enterprise in an objective and independent way, improving the effectiveness of the enterprises. The paper presents the results of empirical studies performed in order to determine the activities leading to identifying corporate competences in Polish enterprises. The analyses were carried out in 56 companies with the use of a specially designed questionnaire of a categorized interview. While analyzing the obtained results, special attention was paid to the influence of cooperation with professional consultants on company’s effectiveness. Finally, recommendations for managers are presented, suggesting the directions for corporate changes leading to better identification of competence gap, taking into account improved effectiveness of companies’ functioning.