The Source Blog
Search
Freelance consulting
Staff substitution: alive and kicking
Consulting firms call it staff substitution; clients call it contingent labour. Some people say contracting; others, interim management. The number of terms is an indication of how contentious the issue is and how blurred its definition. What it boils down to is the use of management consultants in roles which should rightly be filled by [...]
Body-shopping after the recession
As part of the research for our forthcoming report on the European consulting market, we’re in the process of interviewing literally hundreds of consulting firms across the region, from the biggest strategy firms to local specialists. And one thing that has struck me so far is the relentless rise of body-shopping, where clients define their [...]
Who’s eating your lunch?
It is tempting for large consulting firms to think they are immune from competition from independent consultants. The idea that a firm such as McKinsey might be threatened by a freelancer seems as laughable as a cartoon elephant standing on a chair above a tiny mouse. But the truth is that competition has a domino [...]
Why do we have consulting firms?
People have been advising each other since the dawn of time, but it was only in the early twentieth century that they felt the need to band together into firms. The shift was a testimony to the broadening role of the consultants and the size of organisations they were dealing with: individuals were no longer [...]
The great divide?
One of the ways in which this recession is proving to be different from the last one is that demand for freelance consultants appears to have shrunk. Although there’s no hard data on the shift, anecdotal evidence from clients, consulting firms and even freelance consultants confirms it. There are several possible explanations for this. The [...]
© 2012 The Source Blog. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Designed by 