Board Members and Management Consultants

A volume in Research in Management ConsultingSeries Editor Anthony F. Buono, Bentley CollegeBoards and Management Consultants, the eighth volume in the Research in Management Consulting series,explores the growing complexity associated with the growing demands on boards of directors and the challengesraised by evolving expectations of what constitutes "good" governance. As a way of better understandingthe ramifications for management consulting, particular-and timely-emphasis is placed on theevolution of expectations and needs in relation to boards and their operation.The chapter authors, as noted above a truly international group of experts, more than succeed inraising the reader's awareness of the consequences that the evolving nature of corporate boards are having on the function of directors,how this function is being redefined by the players themselves-and what all of this change means for consultants and the realm ofmanagement consulting. Significant questions are raised and explored throughout the volume, from the extent to which these changeswill lead to new social, moral, ethical, and professional challenges and opportunities, to how the relationships between consultants andtheir traditional clients-managers, administrators and employees-might evolve. As management consultants become more activelyinvolved in governance issues, their role will clearly change, but will such changes enhance or constrain the role they have traditionallyplayed in organizations?