ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to unravel the ways in which different approaches to consultancy can be used, and to suggest how careful and informed use of consultancy can achieve a range of goals and benefits. Consultancy generally involves a sustained relationship between client and consultant. The quick-fix solutions that many sought in the 1980s often failed. For a time, some higher education consultants colluded with the more general idea that a short intervention by a consultant-often resulting in the production of a glossy reportcould address and resolve key client issues. It is arguable whether such short and often surface-level interventions are true consultancy or whether they are simply the contracting out of short pieces of work to an external or internal agency. In any event, they are often ineffective.
