THE DIRECTOR, MANAGEMENT CONSULTING,

P.O BOX 5432, KAMPALA

Dear Sir, madam,

RE: REPORT ON DEBATE QUESTIONING WHETHER MANAGEMENT

CONSULTANCY IS A PROFESSION ON NOT BASE ON THE INTERLECTUAL AND
SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATIONAL ERA OF CONSULTANCY IN UGANDA. A CASE
STUDY OF BOSTON CONSULTANTS GROUP (BCG) LIMITED.

I write this report regarding the above reference. The report points out clearly the points well
discussed, and it include my recommendation and conclusion about the ongoing debate.
According to the question, it is critical to look at loopholes in management consulting that makes
it not a stand-alone profession in Uganda and the whole world.

The first management consultants came into being between 1870 and 1914 in the USA, and their
main role then was to help manufacturing companies become more productive and more
efficient. They were especially active in the steel and engineering companies in the north-west of
America. They were not called management consultants then no one would have known what
that term meant but ‘industrial engineers. They were seen as time and motion men, and this
picture of management consultants prevailed right up until the 1960s.

The origins of management consultancy are essentially Anglo-American. The industry was
founded by pioneers in the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and by
leading management thinkers and businessmen in the UK from the 1920s onwards. Among the
early pioneers were Charles Sampson, Frederick Taylor, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Arthur D
Little and Edward Booz. They were all American and were management researchers just as
much as they were management consultants.

There are almost as many definitions of consultancy as there are consultants; each consultant and
consultancy have their own slant on the work they do. In recent years, consultancy has become
such an all-embracing pursuit, for a variety of reasons, that it is impossible to define consultancy
as precisely as we would wish. However, here are some definitions that together sum up what
consultancy is all about:

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 According to the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), which represents the major
UK consultancy firms, management consultancy refers to rendering of independent advice and
assistance about management issues. This typically includes identifying and investigating
problems and/or opportunities, recommending appropriate action, and helping to implement
those recommendations.

Management consultancy is the service provided to business, public or other undertakings by an

independent and qualified person or persons in identifying and investigating problems concerned
with policy, organization, procedures, and methods, recommending appropriate action and
helping to implement those recommendations. “The Institute of Management Consultants.”

Management consulting is an advisory service contracted for and provided to organizations by

specially trained and qualified persons who assist, in an objective and independent manner, the
client organization to identify problems, analyze such problems, and recommend solutions to
these problems and help, when requested, in the implementation of solutions. “L Greiner and R
Metzger, Consulting to Management (1983)”.

In my opinion, Management consulting is an independent, professional advisory service assisting

managers and organizations to achieve organizational purposes and objectives by solving
management and business problems, identifying, and seizing new opportunities, enhancing
learning, and implementing changes.
Within these all-encompassing definitions there are three important themes:
 identifying a problem
 recommending a solution
 helping with implementation

These three characteristics of consultancy necessitate different roles and require very different
competences on the part of the consultant. Thus, the consultant will sometimes adopt the role of
mentor, at other times the role of creator, while on other occasions the consultant is, in reality a
leader. Consultants have also been called ‘company doctors’ because the very term ‘management
consultant’ appears to have originated from the medical profession. If you are ill you might seek
out a consultant physician, maybe in his or her ‘consulting’ rooms.

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 The word ‘consultant’ first came to mean someone whose advice you sought. It was then a short
step to creating the term management consultant, that is, someone whom you looked to in order
to counsel you on managing your business.

Scope
Professional management consultants may be asked to provide objective advice that will help an
organization plan, solve business problems, or manage change, including business start-up,
growth or expansion, reorganization, renewal, diversification, downsizing, disposal of assets,
planning, review of operations, launching new corporate initiatives or projects, and/or acquiring
and implementing technology.
One of the first questions to occur when contemplating the idea of professionalism is, ‘What
does it mean?’ One common understanding of the word ‘professional’ to me is as a contrast to
the term ‘amateur’. There is a tacit, widespread understanding that we should not expect as much
from an amateur as we would from a professional.
Expressed another way, an amateur practice until they can do something right, while a
professional practice until they cannot do it wrongly.

Perhaps we should, in the words of Norman Bellah (1985), ‘reappraise the ethical meaning of
professionalism, and seeing it in terms not only of professional skill but of the moral
contributions that professionals make to a complex society’. In this area, codes of professional
conduct can help professions to make transparent what they are trying to achieve and publicize
the standards of personal behavior expected of such professionals.

THEORIES OF PROFESSIONALIZATION
Professions assume an important role in modern societies. They require extensive academic
training; they are protected by the state and they are committed to a self-designed ethical code.
These characteristics bestow trust onto members. However, theories of professionalization such
as functional approaches, power approaches and societal approaches offer a much broader range
of professional characteristics and functions.

Social Closure Approach

Social closure theories emphasize the active engagement of social groups in efforts to improve
status. Possession of specific expert knowledge and organization of the educational process that

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 controls access to the profession are powerful means applied in these efforts. While the US-
centered power approaches concentrate on the power of vocations, the UK-centered social
closure theories have chosen a wider theoretical basis. Social groups, the basic idea of these
concepts, try to gain and defend social privileges (Giddens, 1995). Social closure is not restricted
to specific occupations. A society is seen as dynamic and characterized by tensions that result
from permanent struggles between groups trying to improve and defend their status.

The very breadth of consultancy activity raises the question as to whether consultancy is a
profession or an industry. This question has been asked for decades. Stanley Hyman, in his book,
An Introduction to Management Consultancy (1961), questioned whether or not consultants
could rightly call themselves a profession, and set out ‘to see if the management consultant
conforms to the criteria of professional conduct’.

Then, Patricia Tisdall, in her book Agents of Change (1982), commented that neither consultants
nor their clients are quite sure whether consultancy is ‘a profession or a business’

Brian O’Rorke (1997), former Executive Director of the Management Consultancies

Association, for example, claimed that consultancy is an industry ‘because the services it needs
to provide to a client are much broader than a personal service can offer’.

However, some scholars, such as Vernon Ellis, head of Andersen Consulting’s Europe/Middle
East division, argues that it is very much a profession because consultancy has a continuing
relationship with their clients or there may be the prospect that this might happen, so in that
sense they are not independent. He adds, ‘I would say we are a profession as well as an industry’.

In my view as a MBA student, management consultant is not yet a stand-alone profession base
on the following point discussed below

The concept of service and social interest

Professionals put their knowledge and experience at the disposal of clients as a service against
appropriate remuneration. The real professionals are characterized by the “service ethos” they
serve clients ‘needs and interests, to which they subordinate their own self-interest. Furthermore,
they view individual client interests from a wider social perspective and keep broader social

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 needs and implications in mind when serving individual clients which is not the case with
management consultants where economic benefit is the determinant.

Some Management consultants/firms are advising clients in targeting potential third parties for
takeover to enhance their strategic position in the market. The favored target for takeover
happens to be the client of another office of the same firm, where a separate team of consultants
is advising the target firm on how it might improve its competitiveness. For instance, some audit
firm suggests to their client to use its consulting division to deal with a specific problem
identified during the audit which is unprofessional.

Self-discipline and self-regulation

While serving clients, members of the profession apply self-discipline in observing the
profession’s behavioral norms. The profession organizes itself in one or more voluntary
membership institutions (associations, institutes, chambers, etc.), thus exercising collective self-
regulation over the application of an accepted code of professional conduct and over the
development of the profession. An equally important purpose of membership institutions is to
defend the collective interests of the profession in dealing with representatives of the clients and
the community

However, in many situations it is not possible to refer to a formal declaration of norms defining
professional and ethical behavior. In such cases the consultant has to be guided by a personal
code of professional ethics and behavior his or her own conception of what is proper and
improper practice, and what is beneficial to the client and the community and what is not. The
consultant is in a position of trust; the client probably believes that certain behavioral norms will
be respected without their even being mentioned.

Management consultancy is a business. In 1993, James Kennedy interviewed several leading

American management consultants and found that not more than 60 per cent regarded
management consultancy as a profession. However, many of those in the management
consultancy business are also practitioners of professions such as accountancy, engineering, and
the law. In addition, there are special interest groupings for management consultancy within
professional bodies, such as the Institute of Management and the Chartered Institute of

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 Management Accountants. These links lend a sense of professionalism to management
consultants by association.
Management consultancy is without doubt a business but so is the work of professional firms. It
is also a separate commercial activity from management as it requires skills and techniques to
practice it. Not only must consultants understand management, but they must also understand
how to achieve tasks without power, using only their ability to persuade and influence the client.

Knowledge and skills

The borders of consulting and its relationships to other professions are flexible, permeable, and
mobile and have recently undergone many important changes. Even now, and even in
sophisticated business cultures, virtually anyone can call himself or herself a management or
business consultant and offer services to business clients without any diploma, certificate,
license, credentials, recommendations, or registration.

Another important part of professionalism is the commitment to ‘continuing professional

development’. How can an individual claim to be a professional if they do not maintain their
currency? More so now that we see Toffler’s prophecy of the obsolescence of current knowledge
manifesting itself wherever we look

This is the reality of the business and I do feel that this loose and liberal framework has been
beneficial to the growth of consulting and has enabled its flexible and fast adaptation to changing
environments and client needs. We can call management consulting an emerging profession, a
profession in the making, or an industry with significant professional characteristics and
ambitions, provided that we are aware of the gaps that need to be filled and improvements that
need to be made.

However, the emergence of Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) and Management

Consultancies Association (MCA), defined body of knowledge proper to the profession, it
define the registration procedure to be followed by the consultant(s) after undergoing through
professional education and training, but membership is entirely voluntary. Institute of
management consultant plays the role in verifying and assessing required knowledge and
experience, assessment by professional bodies, testing the results of further training, and similar.

Ad hoc training basis

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 Management consultancy training is still conducted on an ad hoc basis, and there is far too little
attention paid to professional development. Most consultants do have a sense of responsibility
towards their clients, but this is sometimes tempered by conflicts of interest, especially in the IT
sector. Hyman concluded by suggesting that several procedures and institutions were necessary
‘to transform consultancy into a respectable profession.’ These were:
A satisfactory registration procedure for both experienced and apprentice consultants, the
protection by law of the term ‘consultant’, a system of training and examinations, a disciplinary
body, a professional journal, and a professional training college.

However, the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) was founded. Today the IMC does
have its own registration procedure, but membership is entirely voluntary. There is also now a
recognized industry journal, simply called Management Consultancy, and the IMC has its own
publication. As far as training and training institutions are concerned, however, this is only just
beginning to happen in a systematic way. So, maybe consultancy is set to become more of a
profession than an industry.

Ethical norms

There is a set of recognized ethical norms, shared and applied by the members of the profession
and it is not clearly defined and professionally followed in management consultancy. These
norms define what is proper and what is improper behavior in providing a professional service,
they demand more than respecting the law: a behavior that is perfectly legal may not always be
ethical judged by the profession’s norms.

Management consultancies publish some ethical rules and regulations. However, seeing these in
operation, there is a tendency on the part of members seek ways of avoiding or evading the rules.
As a result, some scholars concluded that codes of conduct need to be principle-based. This helps
to avoid the need to rewrite codes and extend their application in ways that were never imagined
when the codes were initially drafted.

The establishment of IMC’s and MCA’s codes of professional conduct embody the basic
principles such as high standards of service to the client, independence, objectivity and integrity,
responsibility to the management consultant. Professional association of management consultants

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 attach great importance to code of professional conduct (ethics, deontology, professional
practice), which some use as basic instrument to establish the profession and protect its integrity.

Certification and licensing.

Whether and how to apply certification (accreditation) or licensing to management consultant is
a notoriously controversial issue between firms, association and the users because of the
difficulties involve in defining the scope of management consulting, the lack of a generally
accepted body of knowledge governing the industry. Some firms still contest the legitimacy of
consulting institutes to certify their employee base on the argument that certification cannot
guarantee anything more than the application in general and rather elementary criteria of
admission to the profession after all, a consultant who passes the market test by finding enough
clients does not need a paper certifying their competence.

However, collaboration between national management consulting institutes (with individual

membership) has been organized by International Council of Management Consulting Institutes
(ICMCI) trying to focus on professional development and quality by promoting certification by
individual members, institutes and its international recognitions by the profession and the users
leading management consulting toward world recognize profession.

Community sanction and enforcement

The community in which the profession operates, and the clientele recognize the social role, the
status, and the ethical and behavioral norms of the profession. There may be explicit recognition
(e.g. by means of a legal text governing and protecting professional practice). This may include
definitions of educational or other standards required and special examinations to be passed, as
well as of behaviors considered as unprofessional and illegal, and of corresponding sanctions.

Professional bodies hold a trusted position. They have, in effect, a contract with society at large:
They control membership in the professions through examination and certification, maintain the
quality of certified members through ongoing training and the enforcement of ethical standards,
and may exclude anyone who fails to meet those standards. Society is rewarded for its trust with
a professional quality that it would otherwise be unable to ensure. This is the model for the legal
and medical professions and others, including accounting, architecture, and engineering.

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 As I will argue, neither the boundaries of the discipline of management nor a consensus on the
requisite body of knowledge exists. No professional body is granted control, no formal entry or
certification is required, no ethical standards are enforced, and no mechanism can exclude
someone from practice. In short, management is not a profession. Moreover, management can
never be a profession soon, and policies predicated on the assumption that it can are inherently
flawed

Value for money

The fees management consultancy charged clients raise several ethical questions. Charging
excessive fees to uninformed clients as well as undercutting fees and work at a loss with the
intention of eliminating competition are clearly unprofessional, and this is the common practice
with business management consulting today. Generally, professional ethics require that
consultants charge normal and reasonable fees judged by the profession’s current standard and
prevailing practice, this automatically eliminate management consultants from being
professional.

However, for management consultant to attain the Professional status, standard of charging fees
should be put in place to protect the clients and the professional integrity of management
consultants as they are concerned about the relationship between the benefits drawn by the client
and cost of the assignment. If they feel that the outcome does not justify the cost, that there will
be little or no benefit, they are expected to warn client before starting the work, and this can
come in force through governing body.

Confidentiality.

This is another universal principle of work done by independent professional for their client.
Management consultants should accept neither to disclose any confidential information about
clients, nor to make any use of this information to obtain benefits or advantages personally, for
their firms, or for other clients to attain the professional status. Though sometimes confidentiality
may be violated unintentionally by carelessness in handling documentation, naivety in discussing
work related issues in social context, or quoting confidential information in public speeches.

However, management consulting firms like Radix, ABS has developed some standard
governing confidentiality ie Information confidential to a client or employer acquired in the

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 course of professional work should not be disclosed except where consent has been obtained
from the client, employer or other proper source, or where there is a legal right or duty to
disclose

Commissions.
In any event, commissions are delicate issue and management consultant codes fail to provide
sufficient guidance, client should be informed of commissions or similar favors received, paid or
promised by consultant in connection with the assignment because certain commissions are
bribery, or can perceived as such, especially if not disclosed to the client.
Some consulting firms have lost important contracts only to see that a less able competitor was
chosen thanks to greater flexibility in offering commission to a particular decision maker.

Conclusion.
Management consulting loopholes to being profession can be closed if the code of ethics,
conduct, and procedures are wholly put in place, followed and practiced by the management
consultants in Uganda because it promotes better decision making by the management through
effective problem solving, advising, analysis, reporting system, and planning, this promote
integrity hence high professionalism practice.

Recommendation.

In my opinion, I therefore recommend The Director, Management Concerns, The Uganda

Chapter, and P.O Box 5432 Kampala to improve or put in place; satisfactory registration
procedure for both experienced and apprentice consultants, system of training and examinations,
disciplinary body, professional journal, and professional training college just like the doctors and
lawyers has done to enhance the quality and integrity of management consultant.

Prepared by:

………………………..

NYERO CHURCHIL

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