Are Traditional Consultant Roles Obsolete in the Era of Digital Transformation? - Exploring Management Consultants’ Perspectives

Abstract: Management consultancy services are an indispensable part of corporate life and scholars have extensively studied the consultants’ roles in projects. In this thesis, we study if the previously identified roles dominate in Digital Transformation (DT) projects as well – a context in which consultants’ roles have been less studied. Additionally, the new digital age was claimed to have a vast impact on both the needed skill set and the role of consultants. Drawing on twenty interviews with consultants at a large consultancy firm and role concepts from the management consultancy literature, we describe several nuances of existing roles that emerged in the context of DT. As part of our study, we also identified one new role that has not been recognized in previous research, spider in the web, present its distinguishing characteristics compared to other roles and discuss if this new role is unique for DT projects or if it is likely to exist in other consultancy projects as well. Our thesis also enriches the debate on under what circumstances consultants take on or switch to different roles. Consequently, this thesis may inspire future empirical research to explore consultants’ roles from other viewpoints, test the newly discovered role in circumstances other than DT as well as investigate role switching and combinations of roles.