Introduction
Managers have long sought to develop competence through diverse means such as training, recruitment, joint-ventures and using external professional service firms (Monteiro & Birkinshaw, Reference Monteiro and Birkinshaw2017). One of the leading and growing sources of management knowledge is management consulting. This sector has particular relevance for management and organisations not only because of the extent of its use (SGR, 2020), but also the ambiguous and uncertain status of management knowledge makes it difficult to buy (ISMO, 2013). Although the importance of consulting as a source of knowledge is often stressed (Mosonyi, Empson, & Gond, Reference Mosonyi, Empson and Gond2020), few studies examine the considerable international variation in its use (cf. Sturdy and O'Mahoney, Reference Sturdy and O'Mahoney2018). Exploring this phenomenon is important for three reasons. First, theoretically, dominant approaches such as transaction cost economics (TCE) or agency theory assume that the use of consultants is a rational calculation between the costs of purchasing knowledge versus developing it in-house (e.g., Canback, Reference Canback1999). If it can be shown that the use of consultants is influenced by culture then this helps problematise rationalist assumptions. Second, following this, examining and revealing national differences in knowledge acquisition might provide buyers with reflexive insights into their own and others' preferences and prompt the consideration of alternatives. Finally, for knowledge producers seeking to internationalise, it may be useful to better understand the cultural influences on their competitive positions in new and established markets.
Although still overlooked in what is a largely universalist discipline, management, the existence of national variation in purchasing generally (Karjalainen & Salmi, Reference Karjalainen and Salmi2013) and the role of national culture specifically in influencing purchasing decisions (Cannon, Doney, & Mullen, Reference Cannon, Doney and Mullen2010) is well established. That national culture might have an impact on the purchasing of management knowledge is also indicated by studies that suggest that it shapes buyer behaviour (Cagliano, Caniato, & Golini, Reference Cagliano, Caniato and Golini2011; Cannon, Doney, & Mullen, Reference Cannon, Doney and Mullen2010; Pagell, Katz, & Sheu, Reference Pagell, Katz and Sheu2005). Yet, when it comes to the impact of national culture on the purchasing of management consultancy in particular, insights are only just emerging and are sometimes contradictory. For a long time, studies tended to emphasise the ‘rational choice’ that managers might make between the relative costs and benefits of ‘make or buy’ decisions with management knowledge (Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010; Saam, Reference Saam, Kipping and Clark2012) or the occupational or organisational politics of both knowledge and its sources through the legitimacy they can provide (McKenna, Reference McKenna2006). Where culture was highlighted in studies of consulting, it tended either to be based upon single case studies (Kipping, Reference Kipping2002; Kipping & Saint-Martin, Reference Kipping and Saint-Martin2005; Wright & Kwon, Reference Wright and Kwon2006) or was mentioned in passing in macro-level studies (Ruef, Reference Ruef, Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall2002; Wood, Reference Wood2002). As one of the few relevant studies asserted, ‘one of those “unfinished” works is the analysis of culture in management consulting practice’ (Mohe, Reference Mohe2008, p. 42). However, interest has grown in recent years with the inclusion of culture in a generic framework of national variations in consulting use (Sturdy & O'Mahoney, Reference Sturdy and O'Mahoney2018) and two quantitative studies comparing cultural measures with consulting expenditure (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020; Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018). The latter have enhanced our empirical, comparative understanding. However, there are contradictory findings, a focus on only a small number of cultural factors and no qualitative analysis to explore the findings in socio-historical context.
This paper, therefore, examines further how national culture relates to the acquisition of management knowledge. We use the management consulting industry as our focus for three reasons. First, theoretically, many of the rationalist approaches to ‘make or buy’ decisions in management studies focus on the purchasing of consulting services in-house (e.g., Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010; Canback, Reference Canback1999). Second, in the context of professional services, consulting is an ‘extreme’ case (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2014, p. 2) given its high levels of uncertainty in form, process and outcomes (ISMO, 2013). Third, with revenues of over $250bn a year and, until COVID-19, annual growth of around 9% (SGR, 2020), the industry has become a significant conduit for external management knowledge. As a consequence of this proliferation, there is significant, although as we shall see, contested, data available which makes the industry a focus of many academics as well as practitioners.
In terms of contributions, our paper first addresses calls to show how culture matters in sourcing management knowledge in general and in relation to consulting specifically (Pagell, Katz, & Sheu, Reference Pagell, Katz and Sheu2005, p. 388; Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018). For example, the paper responds to the need to ‘link the development of consulting markets to characteristics of national cultures [by] building on (and testing) the established models such as Hofstede's’ (Kipping & Wright, Reference Kipping, Wright, Clark and Kipping2012, p. 169). Our finding of statistically significant relationships between two of Hofstede's indices and adjusted consulting expenditure is important, not only because it has positive findings which will be of interest to both cultural and purchasing theorists, but also because of the negative findings which, as we discuss, may surprise some academics in consulting studies. Our second contribution is explanatory: suggesting explanations of identified relationships by drawing on wider literature studies on culture, knowledge and consulting. Here, we also illustrate and contextualise the statistical relationships by briefly drawing on historical qualitative data from secondary sources. As we discuss, this highlights the limitations of both the ‘rationalist’ and political approaches to sourcing decisions when examined from a comparative perspective. Our final contribution is for practitioners, whether consultants, clients or policy makers, in understanding how different cultural themes influence preferences for different sources of knowledge.
The paper is organised as follows. First, we explore the relation of national culture to management advice, positioning the effects of culture as a complementary, rather than competing, explanation to those in extant theorising. Second, we critically evaluate the use of Hofstede's cultural indices as a proxy for national culture and generate hypotheses linking these to sourcing management consulting. Third, we analyse data from nine countries and show that two out of five of Hofstede's dimensions significantly correlate with consulting spend. Fourth, and uniquely, we provide a brief socio-historical discussion of the UK and Japan to contextualise the relationships we have highlighted statistically. Finally, we conclude by outlining the wider implications of our analysis.
National contexts, culture and management knowledge
The rationality and politics of demand and supply
The recognition of management knowledge as an area of competitive advantage has drawn attention to how it is sourced (Volberda, Van Den Bosch, & Heij, Reference Volberda, Van Den Bosch and Heij2013). Consequently, there has been a corresponding growth in exploring the appropriation of management knowledge whether though in-house development or its acquisition externally (Monteiro & Birkinshaw, Reference Monteiro and Birkinshaw2017). Traditional approaches to understanding the sourcing of management knowledge have focused on the internal ‘make or buy’ decision. Using TCE or agency theory, for example, it is assumed that managers make a more or less rational calculation between the costs of purchasing knowledge on the market, against developing it in-house (e.g., Canback, Reference Canback1999). These accounts are mostly concerned with efficiency and costs. However, there is also a consideration of opportunism by buyers and providers (Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010) and of the occupational legitimacy of external knowledge for political advantage (Jones, Reference Jones2019).
Complementary studies have sought to flesh out our understanding by considering those factors which affect the demand and supply of management advice (see also market research studies such as Kennedy Information, 2010). On the demand side, economic ‘development’ and growth are important (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020), as are client size (Kipping & Armbrüster, Reference Kipping and Armbrüster1999), internationalisation (Wood, Reference Wood2002), environmental changes (Engwall, Alvarez, & Amdam, Reference Engwall, Alvarez and Amdam2001), sector context (Sturdy & O'Mahoney, Reference Sturdy and O'Mahoney2018) and the type of sourcing used, and problems faced (O'Mahoney, Heusinkveld, & Wright, Reference O'Mahoney, Heusinkveld and Wright2013). These, in turn, are linked to mediating or secondary factors – for example, as firms grow, they often require more advice on regulatory requirements. The variety and quantity of sources of management knowledge such as professional associations, government bodies and business schools are not only important in influencing client sourcing (Faust & Schneider, Reference Faust, Schneider and Faust2014), but also vary internationally (Engwall, Kipping, & Üsdiken, Reference Engwall, Kipping and Üsdiken2016; Ruef, Reference Ruef, Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall2002).
National frameworks and the positioning of culture
Contrary to rationalist approaches to decision-making, claims to ‘rationality’ can rarely be generalised out of a local context (Nicolai & Klein, Reference Nicolai, Klein, Klein and Sykuta2010). For example, the US origin – or ‘dominance effect’ – of many management ideas has caused them to be embraced in the UK (McKenna, Reference McKenna2006), but rejected as ‘neo-imperialist’ in Quebec (Chanlat, Reference Chanlat, Clegg and Palmer1996). Indeed, contrary to traditional TCE, the high costs of some consulting firms act as a signalling effect and increase demand for their services (Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010). Thus, as ‘rationality’ appears (partially) culturally specific, we need to consider the wider social and national contexts of decision-making (Cagliano, Caniato, & Golini, Reference Cagliano, Caniato and Golini2011). Within organisations, these social contexts are associated with societal effects: ‘unique national institutions, cultures, and histories’ (Sergi & Hallin, Reference Sergi and Hallin2011, p. 199). Such a focus was complemented by attention to regional variations of ‘business systems’ or varieties of capitalism (Whitley, Reference Whitley2000), where a variety of factors, such as a neo-liberal economy (McKenna, Reference McKenna2006; Ruef, Reference Ruef, Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall2002) or business-orientated education system (Faulconbridge, Beaverstock, & Hall, Reference Faulconbridge, Beaverstock and Hall2009; Kipping & Wright, Reference Kipping, Wright, Clark and Kipping2012) make the purchasing of consulting more likely (Sturdy & O'Mahoney, Reference Sturdy and O'Mahoney2018).
From this wider perspective, culture is an important factor. In seeking to explain the persistent difference in the use of consulting between Northern and Southern Europe for example, Kipping and Armbrüster (Reference Kipping and Armbrüster1999) point to ‘some very deep “cultural” and historical factors’ based on religious traditions. Such differences are also linked to preferences around management innovation (Cagliano, Caniato, & Golini, Reference Cagliano, Caniato and Golini2011) and particular forms of knowledge (Waarts & Van Everdingen, Reference Waarts and Van Everdingen2005). Studies of operations management and purchasing have increasingly pointed to national culture as an important factor in influencing buying behaviour (Cannon, Doney, & Mullen, Reference Cannon, Doney and Mullen2010; Pagell, Katz, & Sheu, Reference Pagell, Katz and Sheu2005). Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2014), for example, show clearly how the different purchasing stages can be shaped by various elements of national culture, but they do not explore the relationship with purchasing volumes or use overall, and focus only on two countries.
In recent years, calls for a systematic attempt to explore the link between national culture and the purchasing of management advice across several countries have begun to be addressed (Kipping & Wright, Reference Kipping, Wright, Clark and Kipping2012; Mohe, Reference Mohe2008). First, Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) carried out two European studies in parallel, one using survey data on manufacturing firms' consulting use and the other national expenditure figures, both of which were compared with three of Hofstede's five dimensions of culture (see discussion below). Second, Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020) compared national consulting use in Europe and North America with two national cultural dimensions and economic development. They found interesting, different and partially conflicting results, but both confirmed the importance of culture in explaining the use of management consultancy, above and beyond economic factors, such as development (also Sturdy and O'Mahoney, Reference Sturdy and O'Mahoney2018). Each study had a particular focus – uncertainty in the case of Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) and, similarly, risk reduction with Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020) – and adopted a quantitative, macro approach across nations, which is novel in consulting research. We seek to build on this research in three ways.
Theoretically, and following the call from Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020, p. 194), our focus is on knowledge and its relationship with national culture. This is not unrelated to the foci of uncertainty or risk reduction followed in the other studies, but is clearly linked to a central feature of consultancy services. We pursue this by exploring all five of Hofstede's dimensions. In so doing, we go beyond existing methodologically similar studies (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020; Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018). Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020) used the GLOBE project to look at two national culture dimensions of ‘performance orientation’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance’. Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) focused on Hofstede's three dimensions of ‘uncertainty avoidance’, ‘individualism’ and ‘masculinity’. Empirically, both Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) and Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020) note the limitations of looking only at Europe and, in Barthélemy's case, North America as well, and call for research that extends further, particularly to Asia; we address this through incorporating data on Japan, India and South Korea.
Methodologically, although, like Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) and Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020), we also perform quantitative comparisons, we supplement these with some qualitative contextualisation of selected findings. In part, this addresses what Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018, p. 322) recognised in their methodology as not being able to ‘verify [the] conceptual relationships’ they found. Indeed, comparative research may have long assumed the superiority of quantitative techniques, but there are increasing calls for the incorporation of qualitative approaches that engage flexibly with local cases to help explain how they compare, and why. In particular, a search for causal explanation of similarities and differences in past data will be incomplete without a consideration of the historical context that offers insights beyond, say, national averages and the limitations of GDP as an indicator of economic development (May, Reference May2011, p. 259). Here, methodological commentators advocate the use of mixed approaches, like cross-case and within-case qualitative comparisons (Mahoney, Reference Mahoney2007) and building contextualisation into quantitative research designs to explain conflicting findings (Grant & Wall, Reference Grant and Wall2009). Therefore, we combine our correlations between consultancy spending across nations and cultural dimensions with a brief qualitative, secondary data-based contextualisation of the UK and Japan. Our choice of these countries is driven by the contrast in our findings between them (Grant & Wall, Reference Grant and Wall2009). Although space limitations preclude a qualitative engagement with all our cases, our account stays close to the differences and similarities; responding to Sayer's call for connecting local understandings instead of viewing them as detached and unrelated (2000, p. 75).
Cultural measures: potential and limits
Our approach allows for a systematic cross-national comparison, while recognising its nature and limits. There are three well-tested sources of data measuring national cultures: Hofstede, the World Values Survey (WVS) and GlobeFootnote 1. Globe has a leadership focus, was primarily designed to link national culture to leadership. WVS is much more general, relating to a variety of social measures (e.g., ‘happiness level’) that are not intended as proxies for national culture. Our preference here is to use Hofstede's (Reference Hofstede1980, Reference Hofstede2001) classic, if controversial, cultural dimensions. These were initially based upon surveys with IBM employees, generated first four, and then five, dimensions, along which national cultures varied (see below). Hofstede has over 40 years of use in research with more than 21,000 articles written and has inspired similar approaches (e.g., Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, Reference Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner1998). Yet, Hofstede's and related work have also attracted much criticism. For example, it has been argued that his work contains methodological flaws which limit its analytical power (Lung-Tan, Reference Lung-Tan2006; McSweeney, Reference McSweeney2002; Smith, Reference Smith, Warner and Joynt1996); that the development of the dimensions is flawed (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, Reference Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner1998; Venaik & Brewer, Reference Venaik and Brewer2016); that it simplifies the complexity of national characteristics (Ghemawat, Reference Ghemawat2001); and has led to contradictory findings (Berry, Guillén, & Zhou, Reference Berry, Guillén and Zhou2010).
Despite these criticisms, we align ourselves with those academics that have defended Hofstede (Kirkman, Lowe, & Gibson, Reference Kirkman, Lowe and Gibson2006; Williamson, Reference Williamson2002) for three reasons. First, reliability. A study which systematically compared a variety of cultural measures suggests that Hofstede's model still has considerable value (Magnusson, Wilson, & Zdravkovic, Reference Magnusson, Wilson and Zdravkovic2008), and another systematic review argued that studies ‘have sustained and amplified [Hofstede's] conclusions rather than contradicted them’ (Smith & Bond, Reference Smith and Bond1998, p. 56; also see, Søndergaard, Reference Søndergaard1994). Hofstede's original data have been supplemented with new countries, data and indices from both his own work (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede2010) and that of others (Minkov & Hofstede, Reference Minkov and Hofstede2011), and his results have been replicated in a number of identical, but also correlating, surveys over the last 40 years (Smith, Reference Smith, Warner and Joynt1996), not least from Minkov's work with the WVS (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede2001). Where there have been theoretical flaws, such as with early measurements of long-term orientation, or the addition of a new index, Hofstede has tended to amend his theorisingFootnote 2 (Minkov & Hofstede, Reference Minkov and Hofstede2011). Indeed, Hofstede's dimensions continue to be cited and used, including, as we have noted, in recent studies on consultancy (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018).
Second, and relatedly, correspondence. Hofstede had been used in more studies that are similar to our own. For our purposes, Hofstede is superior because his respondents are managers, rather than the general population, and thus closer to the decision-makers we seek to study. Importantly, De Mooij and Hofstede (Reference De Mooij and Hofstede2002) showed relationships between the cultural indices of Hofstede (Reference Hofstede2001) and management-purchasing decisions. Third, availability; the measures of culture were available in the same year as those of consulting use. The 2004 data that are available for globe was matched by fewer available sets of data for consulting use.
Although we share a concern with critics over the age of the data on which it is based and its ethnocentrism (Johnson, Head, & Sorensen, Reference Johnson, Head and Sorensen1989), this does not invalidate a careful and reflexive use of his work (Magnusson, Wilson, & Zdravkovic, Reference Magnusson, Wilson and Zdravkovic2008; Minkov & Hofstede, Reference Minkov and Hofstede2011). Therefore, one critique of Hofstede that we especially take on-board is the argument that by themselves, Hofstede's cultural dimensions cannot explain, but only correlate with, national variations. Indeed, we acknowledge that an absence of correlation may simply mean that causal processes have, for example, cancelled out a positive and a negative effect. In overcoming these limitations, we side with those who argue that a review of extant field-level theorising and case-study illustrations should complement statistical analyses to help provide an explanation of how and why variables come to be related (Pawson, Reference Pawson2006). Indeed, as noted earlier, we shall use short case studies to contextualise the relationships that we discover, but first, below, we review the literature for empirically informed theories that might help explain any correlation to develop hypotheses linked to Hofstede's dimensions.
Uncertainty avoidance (UA)
Hofstede defined UA as: ‘the degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. Strong UA societies…are intolerant towards deviant persons and ideas’ (Reference Hofstede1980, pp. 17–18). The issue of uncertainty is also a dominant theme in consulting research (ISMO, 2013). Management consulting, through its expertise and legitimation role, especially concerning risk, is seen as a promise of client certainty (Huczynski, Reference Huczynski2012; O'Mahoney, Reference O'Mahoney, Bolton and Houlihan2007). For example, a raft of ‘predictive’ consulting tools, such as scenario planning and business modelling, are commonly purchased by organisations to help ‘beat the future’ (Mohe, Reference Mohe2008) by reducing the perceptions of the risks of an uncertain, open business environment (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020). Similarly, the legitimation effect of consultancy can manage uncertain stakeholder expectations (Bergh & Gibbons, Reference Bergh and Gibbons2011) and client managers may sometimes turn to consultants for certainty at a personal level to combat their own insecurities (Sturdy, Reference Sturdy1997). Moreover, as client organisations grow in size, they are frequently subject to new uncertain regulatory controls, and result in searches for knowledge elsewhere (McKenna, Reference McKenna1995). However, as noted earlier, consultancy can also bring uncertainties and insecurities to an organisation (Czarniawska, Reference Czarniawska2013) which potential clients may anticipate and seek to avoid. For example, in an expose of consulting practice, Pinault (Reference Pinault2009) argues that consultants deliberately focus on client weaknesses to ‘diagnose and amplify their client's…worst fears’ (p. 168) in order to generate higher sales (also Sturdy, Reference Sturdy1997). Once work commences, there are further uncertainties concerning the work that is being delivered and the lack of professional boundaries (Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010). Thus, in high UA cultures, this threat of instability may cause managers to control work in-house and to distance themselves from the relatively unknown realm of outsiders and external knowledge (Menon & Pfeffer, Reference Menon and Pfeffer2003). Therefore, the literature is ambivalent overall, suggesting that consultancy can both help avoid and magnify uncertainty. This is borne out in the recent research discussed above, where both negative (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) and positive (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020) relationships are found between consultancy use and UA, with alternative explanations offered. Thus, we investigate both possibilities and hypothesise as follows:
Hypothesis 1: There is a relationship between the level of a nation's UA and the use of management consultants.
Power distance (PD)
Hofstede defines PD as: ‘the extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally’ (Reference Hofstede1980, pp. 17–18). High levels of PD manifested in organisations are reflected in respect shown for traditional, hierarchical authorities. This would not seem amenable to the traditional ‘leverage’ model of consulting where often young, inexperienced graduates generate advice. Indeed, as Shi, Sia, and Banerjee (Reference Shi, Sia and Banerjee2009) argue, the perceived validity and legitimacy of knowledge is closely related to the levels of formal power that the source of that knowledge holds within the company, which would be very low with most management consultants. Also, as studies have shown that high PD contexts tend towards autocratic, non-participative forms of management (Newman & Nollen, Reference Newman and Nollen1996), we might extrapolate that turning to outsiders might be equally frowned upon. Furthermore, power ‘needs less legitimization’ from other sources in high PD contexts (Pagell, Katz, & Sheu, Reference Pagell, Katz and Sheu2005: 376). At the same time, a low trust of subordinates might lead high PD senior managers to turn to alternative and high-status sources of expertise. However, an interesting perspective here, is provided by Husted, Gamelgaard, and Michailova (Reference Husted, Gamelgaard, Michailova, Buono and Poulfelt2005) who argue that companies with high PD norms tend towards ‘knowledge hoarding’ for fear of depleting their power by sharing information with ‘knowledge parasites’. Given consultants' critical depiction as both parasites (Clegg, Kornberger, & Rhodes, Reference Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes2004) and as professionals that ‘steal the clients’ watch to tell them the time (Kihn, Reference Kihn2006), one might expect this antagonistic attitude to extend to the use of consultants. This also fits with Hofstede's (Reference Hofstede1993) own view that in low PD companies, managers seek greater equality and are more likely to delegate responsibilities and decision-making. This might make them more likely to use consultants. Given these arguments, overall, we hypothesise that:
Hypothesis 2: Cultures with high PD are less likely than those with low PD to use management consultants.
Individualism
Hofstede defined individualism as: ‘the preference for a loosely knit social framework in society wherein individuals are supposed to take care of themselves and their immediate families only. Its opposite, collectivism, stands for a preference for a tightly knit social framework in which individuals can expect their relatives, clan, or other in-group, to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty’ (Reference Hofstede1980, pp. 17–18). Collectivist societies then, tend to be more suspicious of those outside their groupings (Cannon, Doney, & Mullen, Reference Cannon, Doney and Mullen2010; Pagell, Katz, & Sheu, Reference Pagell, Katz and Sheu2005). As outside experts, consultants are likewise, often associated with a ‘burden of otherness’ (Kipping and Armbrüster, Reference Kipping, Armbrüster, Kipping and Engwall2002, p. 221), especially if they come from another country. At a more general level, culture melds with other contextual variables so that individualism for example, is associated with ‘free’ markets, while collectivism fosters institutions and practices which value social networks and extended family as sources of business knowledge. This appears to be true not only of business knowledge but also of advice (Bhagat, Kedia, & Harveston, Reference Bhagat, Kedia and Harveston2002). In the words of Triandis (Reference Triandis1995, p. 118) for example, ‘collectivists go to… relatives and work supervisors [and] individualists tend to seek the advice of professional therapists and counsellors’. Similarly, Michailova and Hutchings (Reference Michailova and Hutchings2006) found that high levels of collectivism relate to a propensity for sharing knowledge within organisations and lead to difficulties in the transfer of management knowledge by external Western experts. However, some have shown that individualism is negatively related to consulting use, not directly, but through generating different types of uncertainty, associated with opportunism and dependence on others for example (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018).
In addition to influencing the willingness to use external consultancy, culture may explain preferences for the types of knowledge. For example, Bhagat, Kedia, and Harveston (Reference Bhagat, Kedia and Harveston2002) argued that businesses in individualistic cultures were more comfortable with the explicit formal knowledge that consultants develop and sell. Similarly, Hofstede (Reference Hofstede1993) suggests that the management ideas that have emerged from the USA are typically highly individualistic (also, Huczynski, Reference Huczynski2012). In fact, the occupational culture of consulting has been described as having low levels of collectivism, especially with regards to knowledge sharing (Furusten & Garsten, Reference Furusten, Garsten, Furusten and Werr2005). Given that some measure of cultural compatibility is usually conducive to knowledge flow (Sturdy, Handley, Clark, Fincham, Reference Sturdy, Handley, Clark and Fincham2009), consultants might be used more in countries that have similar individualistic practices and ideologies. Therefore:
Hypothesis 3: Cultures that are highly individualistic are more likely than collectivist cultures to use management consultants.
Masculinity
Hofstede defined masculinity as: ‘the preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material success. Its opposite, femininity, stands for a preference for relationships, modesty, caring for the weak, and the quality of life’ (Reference Hofstede1980, pp. 17–18). In the business environment, managers in ‘masculine’ countries such as Japan tend towards ‘hard’ management styles, valuing pay and careerism, prioritising work over family, and often have a fear of appearing weak or incompetent (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede2001).
It is difficult to find explicit links between masculinity and the propensity to use consultants. There is some evidence that individuals from masculine cultures, such as China or India, do not want to appear weak and are therefore less likely to ask for help than those from feminine cultures such as Scandinavia (Siakas, Reference Siakas2002). Moreover, some evidence suggests that western masculinity, at least, renders people less likely to ask for help in general (Oliver, Pearson, & Coe, Reference Oliver, Pearson and Coe2005). This may be especially true if requesting help exposes a client manager's own weaknesses (Sturdy, Reference Sturdy1997). However, as we noted with individualism, culture need not be solely linked with consultancy in terms of a preference for seeking outside help, but also with the form of this help. In particular, although feminine forms of consulting, such as process traditions do exist (Marsh, Reference Marsh2009), the competitive culture of much consulting and the modernist or rationalist form of its knowledge base resonates with images of masculinity (Morgan, Reference Morgan1998). Indeed, Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) found a positive, but not significant relationship between masculinity and consulting expenditure. As there are arguments in both directions, we hypothesise that:
Hypothesis 4: There is a relationship between the masculinity-orientation of a culture and its use of management consultants.
Long-term orientation (LTO)
‘Long-term orientation stands for the fostering of virtues orientated toward future rewards – in particular, perseverance and thrift. Long-term orientation stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and present – in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of “face” and fulfilling social obligations' (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede2001, p. 210).
There are several reasons why LTO may disincline clients to use consultants. First, companies with an LTO are believed to pursue strategies that respect tradition, to resist change and to value characteristics such as high trust, company loyalty and long careers (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede1993). For this reason, we might expect them to trust insiders more than external consultants. Second, a short-term orientation tends to be associated with ‘investor’ capitalism (Kipping, Reference Kipping2002), the institutions of which (e.g., banks and public limited companies) tend to be big purchasers of consulting services (O'Mahoney & Markham, Reference O'Mahoney and Markham2013). Relatedly, these institutions and their investors tend to have a short-term focus on share price, where consultancy use has been shown to have an impact through market signalling (Bergh & Gibbons, Reference Bergh and Gibbons2011). Third, individual and organisational embeddedness in a long-term oriented culture, especially in East Asia, may disincline the purchase of consulting services by fostering a tendency towards thrift (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede1994), long-term business relationships (Minkov & Hofstede, Reference Minkov and Hofstede2011), internal training (Whitley, Reference Whitley2000) and a desire to develop and transfer knowledge internally (Ardichvili & Dirani, Reference Ardichvili and Dirani2005). Therefore, we hypothesise that:
Hypothesis 5: Long-term oriented cultures are less likely to use management consultants than short-term oriented cultures.
Methods
Underlying assumptions
We assume a complex and open relationship between culture and purchasing decisions rather than a simple one-to-one relationship. Our study is therefore underpinned by a realist ontology which seeks to contextualise and explain statistical relationships rather than use them as mere descriptions (Williams, Reference Williams, Edwards, O'Mahoney and Vincent2014). In line with our ontological foundation, we use extant literature to generate tentative explanations for statistical findings: exploring potential causal hypotheses over and above seeking statistical significance (Hurrell, Reference Hurrell, Edwards, O'Mahoney and Vincent2014; Zachariadis, Scott, & Barrett, Reference Zachariadis, Scott and Barrett2013). The literature above therefore identifies plausible causal mechanisms by which culture might be related to purchasing knowledge through consultancy. In testing the hypotheses, then, we seek to develop existing theorising rather than ‘prove’ fixed relationships.
Proxies for consulting spend
Driven by considerations of the consistency of measurement and methodology, we decided to rely on client spending patterns sourced from Datamonitor reports (2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d, 2008e, 2008f, 2008g). For feasibility reasons, we used the data from 2005 and statistically ensured this year's spending was not unusualFootnote 3. Datamonitor only provide data for nine countries which therefore limited our sample. Other reports were available. However, some were prohibitively expensive (e.g., Kennedy Information). Others focused entirely on Europe (e.g., FEACO), with scholars either relying on European data only (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) or sourcing their cross-continental consulting spend data from different reports at the risk of using inconsistent measurements (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020). It should be noted that client spending is not a perfect proxy for usage because consulting prices can differ between nations (Boussebaa, Morgan, & Sturdy, Reference Boussebaa, Morgan and Sturdy2012). However, this variation is much more marked with small firms, which the Datamonitor surveys exclude, and such differences are closely linked to national economic size, a variable for which we control.
Datamonitor collects data from a variety of primary (e.g., telephone surveys with buyers) and secondary sources (e.g., government tax data and company reports) and uses a broad definition of management consultingFootnote 4 which covers marketing consultancy as well as ‘corporate strategy services, operations management services, information technology solutions, human resource management services and outsourcing services’ (Datamonitor, 2008d, p. 7). As noted above, Datamonitor tends to exclude small consultancies (and individual practitioners) from their sample. This may not affect results unduly because, although small consulting firms are sometimes contrasted with larger corporations, both tend to have many shared practices (Lee, Roehl, & Choe, Reference Lee, Roehl and Choe2000). Thus, if we can demonstrate differences within our sample, it is likely that these would be even greater in the whole population of firms.
One variable mentioned in our framework of which we were keen to take account is the size of national economies, as larger and more developed economies tend to spend more (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020). We therefore combined the total national expenditure on consultancy with each pertinent nation's GDP to arrive at a new standardised measure of GDP-weighted consultancy expenditure, calculated using the following formula and the data summarised in Table 1: Consulting Revenue/(Population × GDP per capita) × 100%.
Table 1. Calculation of GDP-weighted spending on consultancy
a World Bank Figures (2005). Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?page=1.
b World Bank Figures (2005). Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?page=1.
We also sought to take account of two of the factors mentioned earlier which have been identified as potentially influencing consulting spend – the size of the finance sector and (client) company size – by running two further correlations. The finance sector and larger companies not only tend to spend more on consulting, but also pay higher rates (Kennedy Information, 2010). The former was operationalised as the value of insurance and financial service exportsFootnote 5 while company size was measured by the market capitalisation of listed companiesFootnote 6. Only the second control variable showed a statistically significant relationship with consultancy revenue, r = .706, N = 9, p < .05 (one-tailed) and was therefore incorporated into our regression analyses.
Sample
Although Datamonitor (2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d, 2008e, 2008f, 2008g) reports are global they only detail country specific surveys for six of the world's largest economies (the UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan). We were also able to extrapolate data for China, India and South Korea from their Asia Pacific report. The selection is useful because they provide varied, and in some cases, extreme, scores for Hofstede's dimensions, and were polarised in terms of spend on consultants (Table 1). In brief, the USA has one of the highest individualism and lowest LTO scores. The UK has the highest spending on consultants per capita in Europe and has similar cultural scores to the USAFootnote 7, but with much lower consulting spend. Germany, which did not start using consultants until the 1960s, has a higher UA score than most other Northern European countries and relatively low levels of individualism. It is also the largest spender on consultants in Europe in absolute terms. Japan, which came to consultancy in the 1990s (Kipping, Reference Kipping2002), tends to buy from Japanese consultancies, dominates consulting spending per capita in the Asia-Pacific region, and scores among the highest in terms of masculinity, UA and LTO. Table 2 summarises cultural indicesFootnote 8 of each country included in our analysis.
Table 2. Cultural indices by country (Hofstede, Reference Hofstede2010)
Hypothesis testing
The correlations between GDP-weighted consultancy expenditure and Hofstede's cultural indices are summarised in Table 3.
Table 3. Correlations for all variables in the framework
Note: N = 9; **p < .01, *p < .05, ^p < .1.
Company size as a control variable had a significant positive influence on consultancy spending. Table 4 shows regression results for five models drawn separately to explain the spending on consultancy from cultural indices after controlling for the influence of company size. We did not draw a single-regression model including all five cultural indices for two reasons. First, there was a strong statistically significant negative correlation between individualism and LTO (r = −.790, N = 9, p < .01) so these two independent variables could not be inserted into the same regression model due to the problem of multicollinearity. Even after dropping one cultural index, the resultant low degree of freedom (df = 3) would not give us sufficient useful information.
Table 4. Regression results for confounding effect of company size on consultancy spending
Note: N = 9; b = unstandardised regression coefficient, se b = standard error associated with b; *p < .5, ^p < .1.
Findings
Our analysis confirmed hypotheses hypothesis 2 (PD) and hypothesis 3 (I). Hypothesis 5 (LTO) was significant only at a less conservative level of p < .1 but regression analysis revealed it does not explain consultancy spending above and beyond company size. No links between UA (hypothesis 1) and masculinity (hypothesis 4) and consulting use were found.
Power distance
Our correlation analysis showed a strong negative relationship between consultancy spending and PD, r = −.812, N = 9, p < .01 (one-tailed). The regression analysis showed that after taking away the effect of company size, even despite the small sample size, PD still had a statistically significant effect on consultancy spending and accounted for an additional 30% of the variance in consultancy spending, ΔR 2 = .30, ΔF(1,6), p < .05. This confirms hypothesis 2, that cultures with high PD may be less likely to use management consultants. It also conforms to our arguments that countries with low PD scores such as the UK and Germany would be more likely than Japan or France to purchase the advice of (often young) outsiders who had little formal authority or legitimacy within the client company and would be less inclined towards knowledge hoarding.
Individualism
A strong positive correlation between individualism and consultancy spending, r = .731, N = 9, p < .05 (one-tailed), confirms hypothesis 3 that highly individualistic cultures are more likely to use management consultants than collectivist cultures. Moreover, after controlling for the effect of company size, individualism explained an additional 21% of the variance in consultancy spending (ΔR 2 = .206, ΔF(1,6), p < .1). Our finding appears consistent with our earlier arguments that individualism is associated with seeking professional help, individualistic ideas and explicit, formal knowledge. Similarly, high levels of collectivism are linked to decision-makers looking to their close social networks or internally to source assistance and to be suspicious of ‘outsiders’ such as many consultants. However, it directly contrasts with the findings of Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) who found a negative relationship from their European-only sample.
Long-term orientation
The correlation between LTO and the use of management consultants was tentatively significant at a less conservative significance threshold of 10%, r = −.504, N = 9, p < .1 (one-tailed). But our regression analysis showed that the marginal 4% contribution of LTO to explain the variance in consulting spending above and beyond company size was not statistically significant (ΔR 2 = .036, ΔF(1,6), p = .521). For some who study the consulting industry, this lack of a significant relationship will be a surprise as academics have tended to assume that long-term strategies tend towards investing in internal, rather than external, resources (Ardichvili & Dirani, Reference Ardichvili and Dirani2005; Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010; Hofstede & Minkov, Reference Hofstede and Minkov2010). Similarly, Kipping (Reference Kipping2002) has argued that short-termist ‘investor’ capitalist countries tend to be heavy buyers of consulting services. However, as Public Limited Companies (Plc) tend to be larger than private companies, it appears that size is the primary reason for the relationship rather than any intrinsic tendencies of corporations.
The UK and Japan in historical context
As noted earlier, it is important to place our findings within a broader historical context to both sense-check and deepen our understanding of potential causal mechanisms (i.e., the ‘why?’) that may underpin or generate empirical phenomena (i.e., the ‘what?’) (O'Mahoney & Vincent, Reference O'Mahoney, Vincent, Edwards, O'Mahoney and Vincent2014). To this end, we selected two countries to help us better contextualise the relationship between culture and purchasing of consultancy: the UK and Japan. We chose these partially because of their comparatively extreme results (Table 5), but also because the economies are similarly structured – highly developed, capitalist, with large banking and finance sectors. Other countries that fitted this description were the USA and Germany, but both are too similar to the UK in terms of their culture scores for a meaningful analysis. By contrast, comparatively with Japan, the UK is highly individualistic, and scores low for UA, PD and LTO. By GDP per capita, its consulting spend is almost twice that of Japan. Given space limitations, the account below is not meant to be exhaustive, but indicative of some of the different historical processes by which aspects of culture in these two nations may be related to consulting spend.
Table 5. UK and Japan culture scores and consulting spending
In contrast to the short-termism of UK investors, at least until recently, ‘most Japanese corporate stocks are not owned by the public but by a corporation's business partners or bank…[who] will not sell off shares so long as their business relationship continues. Thus, managers of Japanese corporations can follow growth orientated policies [such as] permanent employment, high levels of training, and pay by service years rather than seniority’ (Baum, Reference Baum1997, p. 218). From a transaction-cost perspective, such differences encourage decision-makers to transfer the benefits of experience, training and fees that the UK bestows on external consultancies to inside the organisation. By contrast, in the UK, ‘the quest for higher capital market returns…has reinforced the pressure on listed companies to produce substantial quarterly profits thereby amplifying down-sizing forces’ (Ebbinghaus, Reference Ebbinghaus2006, p. 195). Thus, British organisations, having removed swathes of middle management after the process re-engineering and outsourcing experiences of the 1990s, were left with little option other than to look externally for expertise (Poynter, Reference Poynter2013).
The short- and long-term investment patterns of the UK and Japan, respectively, are symbiotic with differences in culture. Hofstede's assessment of Japan as a highly risk-adverse, masculine and long-term orientated society is one borne out by other culture surveys (House, Hanges, & Javidan, Reference House, Hanges and Javidan2004) and qualitative studies (Yoda & Harootunian, Reference Yoda and Harootunian2006). In large Japanese organisations, especially the prestigious and highly networked keiretsu corporations, this translates as cautious, slow and consensual decision-making, known as ringiseido, supported by frequent reporting, touching base and discussion, known as hourensou (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel, Reference Samovar, Porter and McDaniel2011, p. 331). Although the traditional Japanese corporation has been changing, it is still heavily hierarchical (power distanced) and male dominated (Miroshnik & Basu, Reference Miroshnik and Basu2014). Moreover, the relatively LTO of many companies ensures higher levels of investment in both technical R&D and employee training (Ichniowski & Shaw, Reference Ichniowski and Shaw1999), even if short-term financial pressures have increased recently with changing ownership and governance.
These features of Japanese culture can be traced in their historical engagement with consultants. The most detailed study of consultants in Japan (Kipping, Reference Kipping2002) shows that, post-World War Two, consultancy was perceived as a foreign, US invention and had significant trouble establishing itself as an industry. This Japanese reaction against US interventions has been argued to be linked to the much higher levels of collectivism in its culture which, as we have noted, inclines it more against outsiders than other cultures (Dower, Reference Dower2000). Unlike the UK, which by the 1960s begun embracing the US MBA/Business School model, Japan resisted changes to its higher education system, and studying business is still relatively uncommon. Indeed, even today, big brand and high paying US consultancies such as McKinsey and BCG find that the best Japanese graduates favour working for home firms, primarily the keiretsu corporations.
Such a historical context contrasts sharply with that of the UK and England in particular, where social ties loosened through both early industrialisation and liberalism (Adams, Reference Adams1998). The former disrupted collectivist rural communities though urbanisation, and eroded class coherence through the rising wealth of nouveau riche merchants (Hobsbawm & Wrigley, Reference Hobsbawm and Wrigley1999). The latter both provided a conceptualisation of the self that would be alien in Japan – unentangled with community, religion or state – and foreshadowed the political and legal changes which enshrined the rights of the individual more widely. In more recent times, the acceleration ‘free-market’ regulation under neo-liberal reforms made the UK one of the most individualistic societies in the world (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, Reference Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov2010) which, in business, emphasised competitive advantage and market superiority (Deshpandé & Farley, Reference Deshpandé and Farley2004).
Again, these social and organisational characteristics have been seen to have a direct effect on the British use of consultants, and the sourcing of knowledge more generally. The British linguistic and economic affinity to the USA has been argued by McKenna (Reference McKenna2006) to influence the early import of individualistic US ideas via consultants to the UK, and the greater involvement of consultants in government is directly linked by Saint-Martin (Reference Saint-Martin2004) to the neo-liberal inclinations of post-1970s governments. Others have also noted that the short-term orientation brought about by share-holder capitalism, and more transactional employment conditions engendered by weak employment laws tend to create transaction cost incentives for using external consultants rather than investing in ‘up-skilling’ or recruiting internal employees (Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010). The non-interventionism of British governments and the individualism of British business resulted in a lack of knowledge-sharing institutions, what, Kipping (Reference Kipping1999b) argued, was a key reason for consultancy growth in the UK.
By contrast, as noted above, Japan made wide use of national and sectoral knowledge sharing organisations until comparatively recently. Post-war, the country established ‘joint structures for the exchange of knowledge’ such as ‘productivity associations’ and ‘enterprise think-tanks’ which provided trusted and low-risk alternatives to the advice from consultants (Kipping, Reference Kipping2002, p. 21). This is in keeping with the higher collectivism and PD scores in Japan. Similarly, Japanese firms are more likely to turn to older decision-makers than teams of junior MBAs. This is especially so as consultants may sometimes challenge existing practices, something that must be managed carefully in collectivist and high PD cultures. Haffner, Klett, and Lehmann (Reference Haffner, Klett and Lehmann2009, p. 65) find that, even today, Japanese management consultants find providing recommendations for change particularly difficult and will attempt to ‘convey information in a series of anecdotes, indirect references or oblique statements…. because they do not want to cause embarrassment to their listeners’. Indeed, they go on to report interview data in which, faced with the prospect of delivering some radical change proposals, Japanese consultants from McKinsey asked their US colleagues to give the presentation. Others have noted that Japanese decision-makers prefer knowledge sourced from insiders or even governments (Choo and Bontis, Reference Choo and Bontis2002; Peltokorpi, Reference Peltokorpi2006), and that when consultants have to be used, they prefer to use Japanese rather than US firms. Mohe (Reference Mohe2008), for example, notes that ‘in 2002, KPMG had only 6 employees in Japan’ and that ‘although the idea [of Lean Production] originated in Japan, remarkably no Japanese consultancy was responsible for its diffusion’ (p. 50).
Discussion and conclusion
Our study investigated how purchasing decisions, expressed as national spending on management consultancy, relate to Hofstede's cultural indices and substantiated why the statistically proven relationship exist with recourse to historical contexts of consultancy use in Japan and the UK.
Our first contribution is descriptive. We found statistically significant relationships between PD and individualism and adjusted consulting expenditure. However, equally important is the lack of a correlation between UA and consulting spending, contrary to Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr's (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) significantly negative relationship and Barthélemy's (Reference Barthélemy2020) significantly positive association. Barthélemy argued that the use of consultants for best practice work was associated with risk reduction for clients, which, he hypothesised would be stronger in high UA cultures (p. 193). His analysis confirmed the hypothesis (b = .139, p < .05). However, he did argue that ‘[t]hese findings are paradoxical [because] management consultants continuously come up with new “best practices”’ (O'Mahoney and Sturdy, Reference O’mahoney and Sturdy2016). Hence, their clients' fear of being left behind will never totally disappear (Ernst and Kieser, Reference Ernst, Kieser, Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall2002) [and] most organisations are used to working with management consultants (Armbrüster and Glückler, Reference Armbrüster and Glückler2007). Thus, they are often more insecure than their clients (Sturdy, Reference Sturdy1997). Conversely, Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) argued that the use of consultants involved significant uncertainties which would suggest that countries with high UA would have lower use of consultants. They found that ‘[r]egarding the relationship between a country's level of UA and the extent of using consulting services’, they found a negative and significant coefficient (b = −.03; p < .001 in study 1 and b = −.01; p = .004 in study 2) (pp. 320–321). As the data sources for the use of consultants were different in all three studies, this finding highlights the need for further research, both in analysing the relationship between UA and the use of consultants and the differences in spend suggested by different data sets.
Similarly, our finding of a weak relationship between LTO and consulting spend, which can mostly be explained by company size, conflicts with prior assumptions that those with long-term strategies tend to invest in internal knowledge assets (Ardichvili & Dirani, Reference Ardichvili and Dirani2005; Armbrüster, Reference Armbrüster2010; Hofstede & Minkov, Reference Hofstede and Minkov2010). As both Pemer, Sieweke, and Werr (Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018) and Barthélemy (Reference Barthélemy2020) excluded this variable, further research might explore the relationship with different data and perhaps in more, or at least different, countries.
Our second contribution is explanatory. We go beyond recent research in geographical and conceptual coverage and in going beyond a focus on associations between cultural dimensions and consultancy spend. In particular, we suggest tentative explanations drawn from a review of wider relevant literature on culture and knowledge sources as well as our brief historical contextualisation at the country level with the UK and Japan. Although space limitations prevented a fuller analysis, our approach points to opportunities to understand better why national culture might influence preferences for external management knowledge sources such as consultancy (see also Table 6).
Table 6. Summary of findings
At the same time therefore, our analysis highlights the insufficiency of both rational economic and political explanations for relatively high consulting use. Although economic factors such as GDP are clearly important (Barthélemy, Reference Barthélemy2020), along with legitimacy, such approaches should, at the very least, take account of the value systems present in different countries and how these relate to how knowledge and its sources are constructed. This concerns not only the ways in which the decision-making process itself is embedded within a specific cultural context (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2014), but also how what might appear ‘rational’ in some cultures, may not in others. As we argued earlier, national culture does not operate independently, nor simply at a macro-level, but infuses the meso-level structures of supply and demand, and the micro-level judgements such as transaction costs that decision-makers undertake. These were also made evident in our brief historical contextualisation of organisations.
Third and finally, our findings have implications for practitioners, whether consultants, clients or policy makers. Purchasing and other management practitioners will note that our study signals high levels of national differences in the use of management consulting. At a superficial level, this could be seen to act as a warning in low user nations that ‘best practice’ sources of knowledge are being overlooked. However, as others have pointed out, the efficacy of any form of knowledge is also likely to be altered by the context in which it is implemented (Waisberg & Nelson, Reference Waisberg and Nelson2018). In our case, if buyers are artificially encouraged to source external consulting knowledge in a culture which distrusts outsiders or prefers informal ties, it is especially unlikely that any subsequent knowledge transfer or implementation will remain unaffected (Menon & Pfeffer, Reference Menon and Pfeffer2003). For national or corporate policy makers and buyers in high consulting-usage countries, our findings emphasise the potential of alternative institutions to provide management advice, especially if policy is determined at global or continental headquarters (usually in Western Europe or the USA). This might help normalise the non-use of consulting in the face of global trends (Sturdy & O'Mahoney, Reference Sturdy and O'Mahoney2018). For consultants and their employing organisations, our findings are clearly helpful, alongside other economic and sectoral data, in highlighting the varying potential of different markets based around values.
There are several limitations of our study which open trajectories for future research. First, we were obliged to use a small sample. Similar, ideally longitudinal, analyses could be undertaken in differing economic conditions, and future research might interrogate new sources of data such as innovation surveys of firms (Pemer, Sieweke, & Werr, Reference Pemer, Sieweke and Werr2018). Second, we did not control for socio-economic extraneous variables (beyond firm size, economic development, population and finance sector profiles) and future research should attempt identifying potential confounds if data permit. Third, research could be extended to include more contexts which might then be compared to other data on sources of management knowledge, such as business school intakes or sales/downloads of guru texts. Fourth, although we have emphasised differences between nations, future research might examine the forces for international isomorphism, for example in adopting common technology and legal standards. Fifth, as consultancy is, primarily, as US invention, it may be expected that the norms and culture within the industry itself are congruent with, and thus more attractive to, Anglo-Saxon nations. To explore this relationship, qualitative studies might compare the perceptions and construction of consultancy between different regions. Finally, there is additional scope to develop this study qualitatively, especially through client buyers, but also consultants and firms with experience and expertise of operating in different markets. Notwithstanding these limitations, our analysis has been one of the first to demonstrate national culture as an important factor in understanding variations in the acquisition of management knowledge through consultancy and developed our understanding theoretically, methodologically and empirically. More generally, as Pagell, Katz, and Sheu (Reference Pagell, Katz and Sheu2005, p. 387) noted, ‘it takes more than knowing that … decisions are made differently in different countries … Managers must understand how and what dimensions of national culture influence’ them.
Joe O'Mahoney researches, teaches and practices management consultancy. His current research focuses on how small consultancies grow successfully. His most recent book is Growth: Building a consultancy in the digital age (Routledge, 2021).
Andrew Sturdy has a research interest in management and organisational change and innovation, particularly the flow of ideas and the role of management consultants and their clients. His most recent research explores the impact and governance of consultancy use in the public sector and policy contexts. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas (2019, OUP).
Anna Galazka has an interest in social theory and critical realist methodologies, which she has applied to her research in the social organisation of healthcare, industrial relations and knowledge management.
