This chapter deals with the ideas and concepts associated with consultancy, exploring in more detail a variety of ideas that occurred to us while carrying out different consultancies about perspectives on, and approaches to, consultancy. Consultancy is, or should be, a continually reinvented concept, for each client. It is important that what the consultant does is tailored to meet the needs of each unique consultancy setting. In this sense, consultancy is a multifaceted concept that to an extent, chameleon-like, takes on the appearance of its surroundings. At the same time, consultants bring their distinctive contributions to the setting, which, after all, is the justification for paying for them in the first place. These statements encapsulate the tension between two different perspectives on consultancy – on the one hand, as ‘simply’ an additional contribution to the present functioning of the organisation and, on the other hand, as a critic, gadfly or catalyst for significant organisational change.

There are probably as many perspectives on consultancy as there are consultants. While it is apparent that no single perspective on consultancy can do justice to the complexity and variety of the field of public services, what we can do is develop ideas about the values and principles that are common to a great many different approaches. We begin, tentatively perhaps, to develop some coherent ideas about the basis for practice, amplifying our reflections on the aspects of practice explored in Part 2.

In the first section of this chapter we view public services consultancy from different theoretical perspectives, from which we may also view the host or client organisation – the appearance of consultancy changes according to one's view, including one's conceptual vantage point. In the second section we consider different ways of viewing consultancy. In the third section we explore different imagery arising from our reflections on consultancy, and in the fourth and final section we examine two different research strategies that we found invaluable in doing, and reflecting on, consultancy.

Different perspectives on consultancy and the Organisation

Morgan (1986) develops the view that theories and perspectives regarding organisations are rooted in images or metaphors about them, and whether or not this is true we do set out in this chapter, first, a map of different theoretical viewpoints on organisations and, second, a range of images of them.