Academic or Business Value - A Study of the Contributions and Challenges of Student Consulting Projects

Abstract: Student consulting projects are a phenomenon in business schools around the world, which is now gaining ever more traction at SSE. As past research seems to have almost singularly focused on the educational value of the projects, a question that still remains is what value they contribute to the client organizations. Through an interpretive study of seven projects, this study aims to shed light on the students' contributions and explore their peculiar role, whilst also hopefully providing guidance for future student consultants, client organizations and faculty alike. It does so through a more active as well as a more structural perspective, concluding that students do indeed contribute a great deal, whilst the traction of the analyses being primarily affected by their low signalling value compared to established consultancies. This, it is argued, is in turn countered by embeddedness to some extent. The students at the same time face the duality of two clients, in the academic faculty and the client organizations, where the question is if the strive for securing and legitimizing the educational value does more harm than good.