Management consulting aims to enhance organizational effectiveness through manager development and empowerment. There is evidence that management consultants perceive themselves as leaders, but little research has been conducted on their power bases. The purpose of this study is to examine management consultants’ power bases to gain insight into their leadership and their perceptions regarding managers’ development.
Using qualitative methods, 40 consultants were interviewed, and a semi-structured interview outline was applied to identify their power bases and determine how their power base influences their leadership and managers’ development. Thematic content analysis was applied to analyze the data.
The findings indicate that management consultants have either a prominent referent or expert power base and that these two informal power bases affect consultant leadership differently: referent power leads to solving the managers’ problems, while expert power enhances managers’ self-efficacy and ability to solve their problems by themselves.
The study sheds light on an under-explored subject and contributes to both theory and practice; it extends and refines the connection between power dynamics and managers’ development as well as leadership theory and offers practical implications for the relationship between management consultants and managers.
