Coping with chaos and contextuality

Introduction A recent article in Elsevier, a Dutch magazine, says that managers involved in strategy making overestimate their possibilities to steer organisations (Crooijmans, 1998). In other terms, managers overestimate their agency, or their ability to make a difference (Giddens, 1984) in an organisation by making and implementing strategies. Then what should strategy consultants do if they are hired to assist managers in the process of strategy making? Should they reinforce their client’s self-image, because a manager has to manage, and therefore has to believe unconditionally in the effects of his action? Or should he plead for modesty, but still assist managers in their attempts to make strategies and steer their organisations? It goes deeper than that. Consultants face a basic dilemma. On the one hand they should support the managers who hire them in their endeavours, but on the other hand they are confronted time and again with the limited controllability of organisations, the complexity of strategic change processes and the uncertain and ambiguous effects of the action of both managers and consultants. In this dilemma, a consultant can go two different ways, a modernist way and a non-modernist way. He can – as a modernist – try to reduce complexity for his client to enhance the (illusion of) control over his organisation, or he can accept and embrace complexity and ambiguity of strategic change processes, cope with it and use it in his consultancy practice. This paper focuses on strategy consultants who have chosen for this second route: how do they work, how do they create added value for their clients (Delaney, 1995) and what professional identities have they created? Based on in-depth interviews with management consultants and a study of literature it is possible to distinguish three types of strategy consultants in this second route. This typology may help consultants to develop their methods and to articulate their professional identities. It also contributes to the understanding of some of the opportunities for and the variety in non-modern strategy consulting.