Understanding the Barriers and Enablers of Knowledge Creation in Academic Consulting Engagements

It is common practice for academics to engage in consultancy activities and academic consulting is seen as a vehicle for both developing and testing theories, concepts, and approaches. The range of activities that academics may carry out and also the nature of the relationship that they may have with their clients is wider, more complex and supposedly nuanced than that of commercial consultants. Literature indicates that there is a dearth of research on the actual process of consultancy as it occurs in practice. In particular, little is understood about the various roles that academic consultants may take and about the process of knowledge creation in academic consulting engagements. The purpose of research proposed in this paper is two-fold, first to investigate the ‘academic as consultant’ process in action and second thereby to understand how knowledge is created and disseminated in academic consulting engagements. This working paper presents a preliminary search and review of literature that led to the formulation of research questions. A detailed research design is presented which is based on interpretivist philosophy and is built on a qualitative research model involving in-depth interviews with academics and practitioners, and two case studies.