Combining management consulting practices with academic research methods

Due to my recent involvement in supervising students' dissertation projects, I need to deliver lectures on how to combine management consulting skills with business research skills. Here,  I want to some of the ideas of Ormerold (1996), which is a highly relevant article on this topic:

1. Academic research projects and Management Consulting projects are different in terms of aims, timetable, types of solutions wanted, usual source of insight, level of complexity, cost-benefit analysis, means of persuasions, preferred medium of presentation, personality type valued, self presentation, and dealing with uncertainty. (re: Table  1 of Ormerold (1996, pg. 4).)
2. Some ideas  that contribute to the effort of combining management consulting practices with academic management research:
• Process consulting
• Action research
• Double-loop learning
• Longitudinal case studies
• Grounded theory
3. There are culture clash when trying to combine management consulting practices with academic management research practices; at the same time, there are benefits and opportunities for academics as well as management consultants  to do so.

You need to refer to Ormerold (1996) for the detailed account of the reasoning involved. I also encourage you to review Ormerold's ideas and develop your own viewpoints on this topic.



Reference
Ormerod, R.J. (1996) "Combining Management Consultancy and Research" Omega: International Journal of Mgmt. Sci. Vol. 24(1), pp. 1-12.