Assaying the ‘Advice Industry’

This paper reflects critically on management consultants. The paper acknowledges those commentaries which suggest that management consultants must be understood as an element or node within a wider network which constitutes an advice or knowledge industry. However, the paper argues that our understanding of the consultant node within such networks has been fashioned in a manner that serves to restrict our appreciation of the nature and scope of the advice available to managers. To this end the paper attempts to identify a larger network of actors and agencies excluded from both critical and celebratory accounts of the advice industry, which is none the less fundamental to the reproduction of management. The paper concludes with the suggestion that Latour’s analysis of world‐building may offer a useful heuristic to those who would seek to understand the ways in which networks constitute the managed world.