Professionals as consultants in and outside of companies

Abstract

This chapter focuses on professional consultants who have relocated their work from the public to the private sectors. They make claims to expertise thorough their professional skills, knowledge and experience. We describe and analyse what they do, and what they say they do, drawing on analysis from our data derived from interviews and observations as well as documentary study of their varied careers and career trajectories. A key focus of this chapter is on the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ of consultancy, along with an exploration of the ‘meanings’ attached to such work. These investigations result in our using our conceptual tools in order to locate issues such as the identities of consultants, as well as their dispositions towards the roles and the work they have positioned themselves within. A key theme of this chapter is the connections we make between the Governmental and the ‘privatised’ nature of their work. The policy entrepreneurship identified in this chapter is linked to forms of governance within public policy and professional practice.