The process and content of advice giving in support of reflective practice in management consulting

Abstract

Although consulting has been defined as an ‘advice‐giving activity’ there has not been much research on advice practices in management consulting. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on how advice might assist in supporting another central issue in management work, namely reflective practice. This article approaches consulting from a discursive perspective and views reflective practice at the level of language use. The authors use data on naturally occurring talk during a single Organization Development (OD) consulting process and discursive methodology to examine these conversations, and offer empirical evidence on how advising can support reflective managerial practice. Examples of conversational practices that provided reflections on the managerial position, day‐to‐day responses and actions are given. They illustrate varieties of both the content and the process of advice which were utilized when building the reflective stance. The authors discuss the tension between advising and promoting reflective practice in OD consulting settings.

Keywords:

• reflective practice
• advice giving
• management consulting
• OD consulting
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge research funding from The Finnish Work Environment Fund (grant 104383). They would also like to thank Sanna Vehviläinen for her useful suggestions concerning this manuscript.