The purchasing of Management Consulting services has traditionally been characterized by informal and relation based interaction. However, case studies have shown that there is a movement towards more formalized and structured purchasing procedures among buyers of Management Consulting services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and the implications of this professionalization. To investigate to what extent certain mechanisms of professionalization have been implemented on the Swedish market, a survey directed to Sweden?s 500 largest companies was conducted.

Management Consulting firms are dependent on attracting and recruiting new talents since the human capital has a vital role in these types of organizations. In the following years a new generation, Generation Y, will to a large extent enter the labour market. According to several studies this generation has different characteristics than older generations.This thesis examines Management Consulting firms? views of Generation Y and which strategies they use to attract and retain the generation. The fact that the subjects are unexplored led the authors to conduct a qualitative study of seven Management Consulting firms through in-depth interviews.

This paper aims to outline leaders' experiences of managing consultants from their company's performance management system. The study was conducted by qualitative interviews with senior managers and HR professionals within a Management Consulting firm. The aim was to describe the company's performance management system, their consultants and the challenges of leading in this context. The theoretical framework consists of previous research in leadership, performance management and Management Consulting. Within these research areas the authors identify a knowledge gap in leaders' perspectives on managing top-talents with performance management systems in the Management Consulting industry.

Management Consulting firms are an important part of the knowledge economy and they capitalize on the analytical ability and knowledge of their employees. Much research have been made on large consulting firms and their management of knowledge, but little is known about how small consultancies manage their knowledge. Even less is known about the management of knowledge in small consultancies specialized in change management. These firms rely solely on senior consultants and focus on the human aspect of organizational development. This thesis aims to show how these firms manage their knowledge and also provide an understanding of why.

The market for Management Consulting services is changing with an increased level of competition and more specialized service providers. At the same time there is a high level of companies that fail in their efforts to establish themselves on the market. This thesis sets out to give the reader an increased understanding of the complex characteristics of the market for these services, focusing more specifically on which factors that have an effect on the strategy development for companies within the industry. The thesis is also aimed at providing the reader with a deeper understanding of how developing consulting companies can tackle the specific challenges facing them. In order to meet the purpose of the thesis, we have applied relevant theories to a generic strategy model in order to develop a model that is applicable for the Management Consulting industry.

This master thesis concerns itself with the actual work of knowledge workers, consultants to be specific. We have through interviews and observation tried to get inside of the ?black box? of the consultants firm Consult in an effort to describe their way of working through a theoretical framework. In this framework we attempt to combine knowledge work theory with that of organizational development, OD. We try to introduce the situation of the individuals we study, the consultants, through Alvesson (2004) and Løwendahl (2005).

Title ?Att attrahera nya målgrupper med planerad kommunikation?Author Magnus Ejerhed, Anna Johansson and Caroline JägersvärdCourse Bachelor thesis in Media and communication studiesSemester Spring semester 2008Tutor Britt BörjessonUniversity the University of GothenburgAim the aim of the study is to describe students attitudes to Volvo IT as an employer.How can Volvo IT improve their communication to students?Method A quantitative approachMaterial A questionnaire which has been given to 122 students in economics atHandelshögskolan in Gothenburg and Industrial economics at Chalmers Universityof technologyMain results The main results of the study are that most of the students in economics andindustrial economy are positive to work as management consults. They also havean optimistic attitude to work as intern management consults in a large company.The students don?t regard Volvo IT as a possible future employer; neither do theyhave a good knowledge of the organization.Conclusions It is very likely that the students don?t regard Volvo IT as a potential employerbecause they don?t think of Volvo IT as an organization in Management Consulting.Volvo IT has to make their Management Consulting, Fortos ManagementConsulting, more visible if they are going to make the students more interested ofthem as an organization in Management Consulting. They have to inform theirtarget group what new competences they are looking for.

A case study was done of Sthlm Policy Group, a consulting agency that mainly targets NGOs and government agencies in the peace and security sector. The goal of the case study was to explore the tendency of NGOs in Sweden to hire commercial consulting companies. The main interest was to see what the key reasons are for NGOs to hire private consulting agencies, but also to explore what problems that might be associated with such relationships. Interviews were carried out with representatives of the consulting agency, with its clients as well as with other NGOs that were identified as potential clients. The interviewed NGOs and government agencies were found to approve of the use of commercial consultants.

This study examines how Management Consulting firms work with business- and functional strategy and how these strategies are interrelated. More specifically we focus on business strategy (business unit level) and knowledge strategy (functional level) and whether these are aligned or not, i.e. whether strategic congruence exists.A number of recent studies have examined the importance of business strategy and knowledge strategy in Management Consulting firms separately, but few have pointed out the importance of the alignment between them. With this study we contribute to the strategic field of research with a model that describes how Management Consulting firms should work with their knowledge strategy given their business strategy. The model is developed through a synthesis between theories in the field of strategic congruence, business- and functional strategies and thereafter tested by an empirical case study of six Management Consulting firms.

Background: We have identified the combination of Knowledge Management and Human Resource Management as interesting because of this constellation has been mentioned scarcely in previous studies. There also seem to be some interesting correlations with personnel turnover.Aim: The aim of this study is to describe and understand the theoretically best combination of Human Resource Management and Knowledge Management, by creating a model. The model is also going to be tested empirically through consulting firms, to see if they meet the ideal combination. With this model we also want to describe in what way the different combinations of strategies will affect the personnel turnover.Definitions: A huge part of this study concerns the theoretical area Human Resource Management, which we have entitled HRM. Similarly, Knowledge Management has been entitled KM.Completion: The study is designed both as a literature review and as a comparative case study in which empirical data has been collected through qualitative interviews with four Swedish Management Consulting firms.Results: The best combinations of KM and HRM are according to this study that strategies should consist of a thoroughgoing personalization or codification.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur ett globalt management konsultföretag arbetar internt med kunskapsöverföring över landsgränser av den svåruttryckliga erfarenhetsbaserade kunskapen som en konsult innehar. Den kvalitativa data som används i empirin samlades in genom intervjuer med anställda på fallföretaget Accenture. Resultatet av undersökningen visade att praktisk kunskap överförs genom formella sammankomster samt en ?learning by doing? modell där konsulter av olika nationaliteter och grad av erfarenhet arbetar tillsammans på olika projekt. Erfarenheter från projekt samlas, lagras och överförs till databasen Knowledge Exchange, i en process där den praktiska kunskapen transformeras till teoretisk kunskap och görs tillgänglig för hela företaget.

Background: An accountant is supposed to secure that the information from a company is true and fair. Recently consulting, or giving advice, has grown to be a major part of an accountants daily work particularly in smaller companies which may have insufficient financial competence themselves. This means that an accountant occupies two parts, as an independent reviewer and as an initiated advisor, which have caused controversy. Purpose: The purpose is to outline and explain how the accountants and audit customers regard an eventual discrepancy between performing the audit and consulting, and to give suggestions how to manage this. The purpose is also to define what customers perceive as quality in consulting an auditor.

The purpose of the thesis is to examine why women face greater difficulties than men in the Management Consulting industry when advancing as well as to identify potential success factors that enable women to overcome the existing difficulties. In order to fulfil the purpose, a theoretical framework including gender and organisational theory has been applied to a qualitative case study of two Swedish Management Consulting firms. A number of difficulties have been identified related to women's career advancement, which are the following: the male leader and the stereotypical male leadership, firms having higher expectations on women's performance, women's reluctance to self-promotion and to play "the organizational game", women's preference of social networks, men's tendency to promote other men, and the choice and conflict between a career and family life. The identified success factors that enable women to overcome these difficulties are: adapting the male leadership style, having an extrovert behaviour, becoming more active in professional networks, promoting one self, actively seeking to gain more attention, and prioritising one's career. These success factors can be summarised as women adapting a more male-like behaviour.

A consultant is an external expert that exists within all types of organizations. The consulting service can be divided into individual practitioners and large companies whose sole task is to hire out consultants to clients. The need for consultants has grown due to the restructuring of Swedish businesses during the past decades. They have put parts of their business on contract. This has led to a market with other player that have been able to focus on these parts.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine why so many CRM-projects didn`t reach the expected goals that companies management envisaged. The purpose was divided into two research questions. ? How should companies? management design the strategic projection of the CRM implementation? ? How will employees? attitude to changes influence the result of the CRM implementation? The case company was a Swedish technical consulting company: interviews were conducted with two represents from two different departments. The findings of the study were that management often strongly believes that software will sort out most of the upcoming problems and forget the factor that education of employees is at least equal important.