Boards and Management Consultants

The eighth volume in the Research in Management Consulting series explores the growing complexity associated with the increasing demands on boards of directors and the challenges raised by evolving expectations of what constitutes 'good' governance. As a way of better understanding the ramifications for management consulting, particular—and timely—emphasis is placed on the evolution of expectations and needs in relation to boards and their operation.

The chapter authors, as noted above a truly international group of experts, more than succeed in raising the reader's awareness of the consequences that the evolving nature of corporate boards are having on the function of directors, how this function is being redefined by the players themselves—and what all of this change means for consultants and the realm of management consulting.

Significant questions are raised and explored throughout the volume, from the extent to which these changes will lead to new social, moral, ethical, and professional challenges and opportunities, to how the relationships between consultants and their traditional clients—managers, administrators, and employees—might evolve. As management consultants become more actively involved in governance issues, their role will clearly change, but will such changes enhance or constrain the role they have traditionally played in organizations?