Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on approaches to innovation in the consulting industry: a grounded theory pilot study

PurposeThere is a significant pressure on consulting businesses to produce innovative solutions and to assist their clients in producing innovative solutions for their organizational problems as well. In addition to that challenging need to innovate for survival and competition, as other contemporary firms, consultancies must face the global changes brought by the outbreak of the coronavirus infection since 2019. This qualitative pilot study aimed at exploring the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the approaches to innovation in the consulting industry.Design/methodology/approachTriggered from the literature gap on approaches to innovation in consultancies during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, a grounded theory approach was used to generate a theoretical explanation of how the COVID-19 is affecting the strategies and approaches of businesses in harnessing innovation opportunities from the perspectives of four professionals from an information technology (IT) consultancy in the USA.FindingsThe findings of this pilot study showed that organizational leaders' increased responsiveness, a Job-To-Be-Done strategy, organizational support and team adaption are the keys to harvesting dynamic capabilities for better competition, even during global environmental changes.Practical implicationsThis implies that managers remain the main actors in a firm's efforts to harvest dynamic capabilities. Innovation strategists, business leaders and policymakers can confidently work together to implement novel and flexible work settings that integrate both social and economic advancements.Originality/valueTheoretical implications support the sustainable innovation strategy concepts and the Job-To-Be-Done theory. Finally, the substantive theory from this pilot study lays the ground for future research on approaches to innovation in the consulting industry.

Factors influencing sustainable maintenance in manufacturing industries

PurposeThis paper intends to discover, analyze and construct a model that may be used to measure the interactions between major factors which are identified by expert opinion and literature review for sustainable maintenance specific to manufacturing industries using the total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) approach.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 12 factors were acknowledged from the literature review and the opinions of experts from manufacturing industries. Scheduled interviews with the employees were conducted by using the questionnaire which is developed from the identified 12 factors in order to find the interrelationships among these factors. The TISM approach is used for analyzing factors' interrelationships. The Matrice d'Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliques a un Classement (MICMAC) approach is used to identify the key factors which influence sustainable maintenance.FindingsThis paper found 12 factors that have ascendancy over the sustainable maintenance practices in the industry by reviewing the literature and consulting industry experts to realize the linkage between the factors. The results found that availability rate, adopting government policies, training and education are key factors that influence sustainable maintenance.Practical implicationsThe proposed model would be valuable for experts to understand the factors influencing sustainable maintenance in the industry. This model can be used by an organization's maintenance managers to implement sustainable maintenance practices in their plants.Originality/valueThis study analyzes the interrelationship between factors influencing sustainable maintenance in manufacturing industries, which is a new effort in this domain of practice.

Features of application of corporate enterprises management technologies

The purpose of the article is to identify problems in the Ukrainian and European consulting markets, outline key trends and prospects for Ukrainian consulting companies based on the application of European experience. The study aims to determine the characteristics of the consulting market in the domestic and European markets during the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors identified the state of the consulting industry and the main providers of consulting services in the domestic market. Management consulting in Ukraine is used sporadically in contrast to European countries, cooperation with consultants regularly. The reason is that the vast majority of companies, firms, and companies seek advice in critical situations when their own efforts are simply no longer able to solve existing problems. The authors identified the state of the consulting industry and the main providers of consulting services in the domestic market, provided auditing information, and identified several contradictions and problems of auditing; the number of registered auditors on the territory of Ukraine for 2016-2020 and their structure by regions in 2019 and 2020 were studied as well. The article forms the main trends of the European consulting market in 2021: digitalization, individual decisions, a strategy that moves within the company, high return on investment, growing demand for the technology sector, and restructuring practice. In general, the consulting industry has suffered a significant blow from the Covid-19 crisis, and, according to the latest data, at the end of 2020, it was about 18% lower. However, the prognosis is improving in many European countries as they manage to reduce the number of new coronavirus cases. According to this data, the authors suggest that domestic companies should follow practices: focus their activities on crisis management, quickly adapt customer business to modern conditions, accelerate the pace of digitalization, and use innovations to update strategies.

AN ARCHITECTING APPROACH TO TRANSFORMATIONS WITHIN THE DESIGN CONSULTING INDUSTRY: IDEO CASE STUDY

Enterprises evolve continuously, usually gradually, but sometimes rapidly in the face of disruptive events. The purpose of this study is to analyze the transformation process of the design consultancy in the face of challenges presented by advanced technology, economic change, and systemic shifts by applying selected methods and tools from the ARIES (Architecting Innovative Enterprise Strategy) framework. The study uses IDEO as an example to discuss the organizational structure of design consultancies, and describes how IDEO has evolved in the context of change. This study illustrates some emerging challenges that the design consulting industry is facing now and will face in the future, and how these challenges will affect organizational culture and structure, the design consulting process, the recruiting criteria, and the designers, as well as envisioning possible paths for the future of design consultancy.

The boundaries in the area of knowledge transfer in management consulting

In a historical retrospective, although the existing literature calls the management consulting industry an extraordinary sector and a unique phenomenon in the business context, in fact these statements are not accompanied by a number of academic studies that emphasize the importance of the effective work of the management consultants. To contest the lack of studies in this emerging area, this article aims to understand the implications of the border to the transfer of information and knowledge from management consultants to their client companies. The results of the empirical analysis in the form of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires applied to management consultants and SME managers in Portugal reveal that the competency factor must be based on the four knowledge families of business management - the know- know, the competence, know-how and know-how to be and it is only from this conjugation that any kind of constraints that can be found along the way (political, physical or cultural) are able to be unblocked.