The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Establishing Student/Researcher Credibility as Consultant

This article is the first of two which examine the difficulties experienced by the unqualified researcher or student who may be called upon to act as consultant in conventional or action‐research project work. The first article addresses the problems of entry; the second looks at the production of a credible and acceptable report. The thesis of both papers is that conceptual frameworks currently offered as an aid to understanding the consultancy process have concentrated on psychological and processual aspects of consultancy at the expense of the cultural. A social anthropological perspective, it is argued, can offer richer interpretations in areas where current theory is infertile. This first article addresses some of the problems of the student consultant in gaining entry and establishing a contractual basis for his activities. It begins with an examination of the cultural clashes between social scientists and managers, using current published research as examples, emphasising the effect of each on the other and the potential risk or threat involved for each. The consequences of attempts to control this work in an imbalanced situation are raised by the examination of a part of a consultancy project completed by the author, presented as a case example. The subsequent discussion of the case uses the concept of the consultant as sorcerer, allied to the dimension of apprenticeship, to analyse the case as a form of initiation rite. The conclusions drawn suggest that the content of consultancy, and even the dimensions of individual processes, may well be subordinate to the importance of “public opinion” in sustaining it as an activity. The second article will further examine this suggestion through the case example of the production of a consultancy report.