ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how a community of management consultants is dependent on joint knowledge sharing in order to maintain its role and position as experts in how to manage operations in organizations. It reviews the literature on management consulting, discusses the concept of identity and how this concept may accommodate the ambiguities surrounding the work of management consultants. The chapter addresses some practical consequences and theoretical implications. There is a strong emphasis on management consultants as a professional category in possession of specialized knowledge that is used in a variety of settings. The chapter then examines the literature on identity in knowledge-intensive firms by pointing at the relational and situational constitution of identities in knowledge-intensive work and consulting work more specifically. It suggests that identity is a central theoretical construct when examining and understanding knowledge-intensive work and that identity is relational, contingent and locally enacted, i.e., in the domain of everyday practice and interaction with clients.
