Reflections on The Origin of the Management Consultation Division of The Academy of Management
by William B. Wolf
As with most things in life, the Management Consultation Division of the Academy of Management evolved rather than being planned in detail. Its origins were a matter of sociometric relations and chance. As I recall the sequence of events was something like this . . . When I was a professor at the University of Southern California, I was deeply concerned about a holistic approach to management. My academic obsession was in the development of a general theory of management. I felt this was essential in order to provide a framework for understanding the practice of management. I held to the opinion that anyone with a graduate degree in business should be able to go into any formal organization and determine its managerial prerequisites, diagnose its problems, make prescriptions and recommendations, make a prognosis of the outcome, and be reasonably correct. In essence, I felt anyone with a graduate degree in business administration should be a qualified doctor to formal organizations.
Researching my obsession led me to the area of differential diagnosis in medicine. I made numerous field studies using the medical model. I ended up with the conclusion that the major difference between the medical model and the study of formal organizations was that in medicine the basic concern was with only one species -- homo sapiens. Whereas in the study of organizations there were many species but no adequate taxonomy. As a result I concluded that the general theory of management was a methodology for the diagnosis of each individual organization being studied. My logic was that all formal organizations shared common processes of management -- i.e. organizing, directing, controlling and leading. However, the manner in which these processes are carried out depends on unique aspects of the specific organization's environments. To know how a specific organization should carry out the management processes, one needs a normative model of its management processes. In short, each organization is in some respects unique. To accommodate the unique features one has to have a holistic sense of each organization. At the time, I called an organization's uniqueness "organization's character" and I labeled the process of developing a normative model of an organization as the "construct approach."
I suspect my thinking was influenced by my early experience in a machine shop. We had one old time machinist whose work was always precise. I was in awe of him and asked how he managed to hold to such close tolerances. His answer was, "It's easy, the first thing I do is true up on an edge. Once I get a perfect edge I use it as a reference point for the other cuts."
My approach to management theory was to develop meaningful reference points for dealing with any specific organization. In thinking this through, I fell back on Rescher's and Helmer's article on the Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences. They were working on the art of forecasting. Originally, they sought a theory for making predictions of the shape of things to come.*
They finally gave up on developing a theory of forecasting. They couldn't do it. However, they recognized that in almost all fields of science there are experts who have good track records in forecasting. Hence, Rescher and Helmer decided to poll the experts. They skipped theory construction! Once experts had made predictions they were given feedback on each others predictions and a second round of forecasts were made -- this process was repeated as deemed necessary. They called this the Delphi Method of forecasting. * ( 1 )
I felt the way to approach development of organizational constructs was to go to the experts. But to do so, I first had to develop a diagnostic framework for developing reference points; hence I worked on the concept of Organization Character and also explored how the experts dealt with different organizations.
Fortunately, I had some mature doctoral students. One, Larry Senn, did a doctoral thesis dealing with Organization Character. * ( 2 )
Bob Wright was one of my doctoral students. He did a Delphi type study of successful management consultants. That is, he explored how consultants diagnosed organizations and adapted to the uniqueness of various environments.
What has this to do with the Management Consultation Division? Well, as fate unfurled I became National President of the Academy of Management. In that role I got the Board of Directors to approve a plan for establishing in the academy a number of professional divisions.
One division which I personally suggested was Management Consulting.
This caused some controversy. Several of the Board Members objected to the idea of having a Management Consulting Division. For example, Charles Summers sent me a letter in which he stated, "The Division of Management Consulting should be dropped. It does not fit in as a professional area of study." * ( 3 )
However, the Board of Directors arrived at a compromise. For the next year Management Consulting was to be an Interest Group. At the end of the year, the Board would review the situation to see if it should be dropped or given full division status. * ( 4 )
I should add that Charles Summer added to my list, a division on Organizational Development (OD). I thought this overlapped with Consulting. However, in my travels around the Regional Academy Meetings I got the impression that OD was primarily the domain of psychologists and people associated with NTL (National Training Laboratories).
Bob Wright, as Chairman of the Interest Group on Management Consulting, went to work!! Bob organized an advisory committee and set up a workshop for the next annual meeting of the Academy. He was also asked to have his group think of a new title. One which indicated the group was not doing consulting. Rather, it was running seminars, encouraging discussions, etc. on the art of consulting. In other words, Bob's goal was to develop an organization, under the umbrella of the Academy of Management, dedicated to helping professors of management improve and extend their professional competency as consultants.
Charles Summer was Program Chair for the next annual meeting of the Academy (i.e. the 1971 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia). I immediately contacted him to insure that Bob's committee was included. The study of Consulting was included in the planning for the program! (Charles made it official with a letter to Bob on February 25, 1971).
George Gore was invited to be on the Advisory Committee of the Consulting Group. In his letter of acceptance George suggested the format for the program at the next annual meeting of the Academy (letter to Bob Wright of April 24, 1971). Furthermore, George offered to provide a list of the names and addresses of all Academy members engaged in consulting.
It turned out that as of September 1971, there were 1,170 Academy members who were active in consulting and as of 1971 we had 283 members in our group.
In 1971, while we were still an interest group, I had a graduate student at Cornell University, Mike McManus, do a master's thesis on the Nature of the Academic Consultant. McManus interviewed a sample of our division's members and distilled a number of precepts and caveats for professors who were, or aspired to be, management consultants. His study helped us get facts about our profession and how we could serve it best.
In the history of the development of the Division of Management Consultation, George Gore looms as a critical force. At his own expense he sent a questionnaire to all the members of the Academy regarding their interests and their activities in management consulting.
George's impact is really greater than just influencing the development of the Consulting Division. I feel he was one of the key figures in the success of my tenure as an officer of the Academy. His contribution started with the 1969 annual meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio. George chaired the arrangement committee. At the time, the Academy of Management had been dropped from the annual meeting of the Allied Social Sciences. The Academy was meeting in isolation — that is it was the only organization involved in our 1969 meeting. Moreover, we were meeting in Cincinnati in August!
George managed the show. It was a professional job!! We had almost every detail planned and properly executed. The meeting ran like a 1st class watch, thus when I became president, I turned to George and appointed him Chairman of the Membership Committee. In his typical way he took over and did a 1st class job. He set up special sub-committees to attract top executives from the business world and to develop a membership base in Europe. Moreover, he put our records on a computer program so we had a system for following our members and knowing their interests. During his tenure in this position our Academy more than doubled in size.
For a period, our Interest Group Chairman, Bob Wright, was out of the country and later he was out due to illness. In those times George took over and kept things running. Moreover, in 1972, George started our Division's Newsletter, The Consultants Communiqué. The first edition of 31 pages was published in 1972.
One thing George did in the first issue of the newsletter was point out that the name "Division of Management Consulting" involved using the noun, "Management" as an adjective and using the verb, "Consulting" as a noun. He was responsible for "Division of Managerial Consultation" being our current name.
Volume I No. 1 of The Consultants Communiqué contained a report on the symposium conducted by our division at the 1972 annual meeting of the Academy, the subject was "The Academic Consultant in the Seventies." George moderated the discussion. The participants were André Delbecq, George R. le Lodzia, William M. Fox, Dennis F. Ray and Robert Wright.
After the Division of Management Consultation was officially launched, I lost track of its development. I do know that Bob Wright set up a committee which drafted a Code of Ethics for Academic Consultants. As I understand it, both George Gore and Bob Wright were important contributors to this. Then too, in 1979, Bob and George edited "The Academic Consultant Connection" (Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co. 1979). This volume was a significant contribution to professors in our division. It presented selected contributions from papers appearing in the Proceedings of the National's annual meeting and/or in the Consultants Communiqué. In addition it had 20 articles which were papers presented at the Division's programs but which had never been published. One of the benefits of this volume is the fact that the articles are organized around topics instead of dates. Furthermore, the book contains the "Position Statement on Professor/Consultant" as approved in 1977 and it also has "The Standard of Professional Conduct for Academic/Management Consultants." Both of these are attached here as Appendix A and Appendix B.
In summary, the above describes the start up of the Division of Management Consulting. In my mind, the development of the Division is a major contribution to the profession of Management. Today, the Division is one of the largest and most active in the Academy. Moreover, it directly relates theory and practice. From my point of view, it stands at the forefront for advancing research and exploring the new frontiers of management consulting.
William B. Wolf
May 11, 1997
Notes
1. I believe Rescher was a mathematician and Helmer was a philosopher. At the time they were working for Rand Corporation.
2. Senn went on to develop his own consulting firm (Senn & Delaney). It specialized in change management and one area on which it focused was Organization Character. (Several years ago Senn & Delaney sold their "Change Management" practice to Anderson Consulting.)
3. Letter from Charles E. Summer to the ad hoc Committee on Divisionalization of the Academy. December 29, 1970.
4. I nominated Bob Wright to be the Chairman of the "Interest Group." Bob was an ideal candidate. His thesis had given him contact with a wide range of successful consultants, plus he had industrial experience in management. His nomination was approved by the Board.