ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of consultants in the dissemination of management innovations in different institutional contexts. The chapter looks in particular at how consultants competed or cooperated with other diffusion channels. It also pays attention to the ways in which they managed (or not) to connect to existing entrepreneurial networks in different countries. As the detailed empirical analysis tries to show, there were two factors which limited the role of consultants in this process: (1) the existence of large-scale trust-based networks among the entrepreneurs and industrialists in a given country, which enabled a direct exchange of new management ideas; and (2) the availability of other diffusion channels, which provided alternatives to the use of consultants. The underlying idea is that a view which examines consultant in market terms, as paid suppliers of new management ideas, has only limited validity, especially in a European context where networks and relationships play a crucial role. Nor is an overly critical approach, which sees consultants as manipulators, more convincing since it largely leaves out managers from the process.
