Introduction

Academic literature on management consulting over the past thirty years has focused increasingly on the critical perspective on the industry, which examines questions about the nature of management consultancy knowledge, and how management consultants’ knowledge claims come to be accepted (Fincham and Clark 2002). This rich seam of research has focused attention on management consultancy firms as ‘systems of persuasion’ (Alvesson 1993, p. 1011), and on management consultants’ use of rhetoric and story-telling to persuade clients of the legitimacy of their knowledge claims (Legge 2002; Whittle 2006). Consultants create narratives that draw clients into accepting the consultants’ interpretations of their problems, and persuade them that the consultants – and only they - have the rational, scientifically based approaches, methods, tools and techniques that are needed to solve these problems (Legge 2002; Fincham 2002). Consultants support these narratives with descriptions of completed projects, which they claim demonstrate the reliability of their approaches, methods, tools and techniques in practice, and with lists of well-known clients who have used their services in the past (Legge 2002; Fincham 2002). Fincham (2005) argues that consultants’ claims for the efficacy of their services are not to be relied upon, and that their descriptions of their practical application of them lack credibility as empirical evidence as to the actual consultancy processes and outcomes that they have implemented and achieved. While academic writers may question the accuracy and reliability of consultants’ narratives of what they achieve through their projects, their scepticism might not seem at all comparable with Plato’s (2013a) denial, for example, of the accuracy of Homer’s account in The Iliad of how Zeus threw Hephaestus out of heaven for trying to stop him beating Hera. Yet Plato’s denial of the reliability of The Iliad might have been quite as shocking to a contemporary audience as Fincham’s (2005) denial of the reliability of management consultants’ stories of their successes with their clients. Many of Plato’s contemporaries believed in the literal truth of the narratives in the Homeric poems, and most valued them as a source of insights into moral excellence and truths about life (Gulley 1977). Plato (2013a, b) banned the poets from his Republic because he denied that their narratives offered any insights into truth, and because he believed that their emotional appeal to their audiences made their potentially misleading fictions dangerous. Are Plato’s objections to poetry also applicable to the narratives of management consultancy? If so, what should management consultants and stakeholders in their industry do about it? This paper, first, examines the nature of Plato’s objections to the poets, and his denial of their claims to knowledge. Second, it summarises an interpretation of Plato’s account of knowledge and belief in The Republic. Third, it examines how far management consultants, like Plato’s poets, should be regarded as creative story-tellers and rhetoricians, rather than knowledgeable professionals. Fourth, it uses Plato’s account of knowledge and belief as a framework for evaluating the knowledge-related content of consultancy services, and as a basis for comparing their situation with that of the poets. Fifth, it considers what management consultants and other stakeholders in their industry might do in response to the kind of objections that Plato might raise against consultants. Finally, some conclusions are drawn from this application of Plato’s ideas to the management consultancy industry.

Plato and the Poets

Plato (2013a, b) discusses poetry in Books 2 and 3 of The Republic, concluding definitively that poetry should be banned from his ideal state in Book 10. Plato includes all creative writing within his definition of poetry, whether metrical or in prose (Gulley 1977). Plato’s view seems shocking today, and would have seemed equally so to his contemporaries. Gulley (1977) points out that Plato was arguing against the widely held view that poetry provides valuable insights into truth, whether literal or symbolic. Plato is clearly familiar with poetry and appears to admire it. Indeed, the frequency with which he quotes from the poets in his dialogues has raised questions as to the sincerity of his opposition to poetry. In consequence, some scholars have searched Plato’s writing for ways of circumscribing his ban on poetry. For example, Gilbert (1939) suggests that Plato might have allowed the pleasures of poetry to those who understand how to appreciate it for what it really is, that is, as pure art and not as moral education.

In Book 10 of The Republic, however, Plato (2013b, p.437) says definitively that ‘the only forms of poetry we are to allow in our state are hymns to the gods and eulogies of good men’. Plato argues that the poets merely imitate events in the real world, while making their narratives seem as real as possible for the sake of emotional appeal to their audiences. Thus, a poet is like a painter who produces an image of an actual table. It is no more possible to gain superior knowledge of moral excellence by reading Homer than it is to gain superior knowledge of real tables by looking at paintings of them. Plato holds that poets cannot reveal any truths that go beyond the fictions that they narrate, and that revelation of truth is the domain of philosophers and not of poets (Brownson 1897). Plato objects to the unwarranted position of authority that the poets occupy in the minds of his contemporaries, which arises from the beauty and fame of their work rather than the reliability of what they say (Partee 1973). Homer and Hesiod were revered figures of remote antiquity, while the great tragedians of the fifth Century BC were long dead when Plato was writing The Republic, so that the authority of their sayings was both well established and beyond questioning through direct dialogue with the original authors. Plato frequently has Socrates’s interlocutors appeal to poetic authority for their views, but Socrates insists on engaging with these poetic creations as if they were prosaic propositions to be subjected to critical, logical analysis. In other words, Plato converts the poet’s story (muthos) into a philosopher’s account (logos), and analyses it as such (Halliwell 2000). Although the poets frequently have a place in the dialogues, therefore, Plato engages with them only on a philosopher’s terms.

While Plato might accept that poets may hit upon truth through inspiration, Edman (1936) draws attention to a fatal weakness, on Plato’s analysis, in what they can offer, that is, they are unable to justify what they are inspired to say with arguments. As Griswold (1981) points out, the poets tell their stories without ever explaining how they know about the events that their stories narrate, or giving reasons for what they claim to know. Moreover, poets may be dangerous because, as Duncan (1945) observes, they exert influence on people through the emotional appeal of their work without considering or appreciating its moral effects. The ban on poetry is entirely consistent with Plato’s contention that, unlike philosophy, poetry has nothing of value to offer to the seeker after truth. Poets have no real knowledge because they offer no justifications for their beliefs. They tell stories that often are untrue. They have unwarranted authority. They use emotional appeal to exert potentially deleterious moral influence on their audiences. There is ‘a long-standing dispute between philosophy and poetry’, and Plato (2013b, p.437) is unequivocally on the side of the philosophers.

Knowledge and Belief in The Republic

The middle books of The Republic, Books 5 to7, set out Plato’s (2013a, b) views on knowledge and belief. These books provide a framework that can be used to assess the content of what the poets offer, and indeed the content offered by others who might be compared with the poets. Unfortunately, the interpretation of what Plato meant by his account of knowledge and belief is disputed. In his review of the main interpretations, Lee (2010, p. 863) concludes that the debate ‘has reached a stalemate’. A particular problem arises from the centrality of Plato’s controversial theory of Forms, and the commonly held view that this entails the idea that there are two separate worlds, one consisting of physical objects that are perceived by the senses, and another consisting of non-physical Forms that are intelligible but incapable of being perceived by the senses. Fortunately, Plato (2013a) introduces his discussion of knowledge and belief in The Republic by challenging himself to develop an argument that will persuade the ordinary person of his views. Plato (2013a) refers to those ordinary, unphilosophical people as sight-lovers (philotheamones) and lovers of listening (philekooi) because of their love of watching performances of tragedy and comedy, and of listening to dramatic poetry. Plato (2013a, pp. 551–552) writes, ‘what then if the [sight-lover or lover of listening] were to become angry with us, the one we say has an opinion but not knowledge, and argues that we are not telling the truth? Will we have any way of soothing him and gently persuading him …?’ While many problems of interpretation remain, this self-imposed challenge at least entitles us to interpret Plato’s argument in such a way that it requires no prior commitment to his controversial theory of Forms. Fine (1990) builds upon this introductory statement to develop an interpretation of this section of The Republic which, despite some problematic readings of the Greek text, appears generally to be more satisfactory to the modern reader than its alternatives. Fine’s (1990) analysis has been adopted in this paper because of its insistence on Plato’s undertaking to argue for the theory of Forms rather than to assume its acceptance from the outset, its comprehensibility to a modern audience, and the absence of a compelling argument for preferring any alternative interpretation.

On Fine’s (1990) analysis, Plato distinguishes knowledge from belief on the uncontroversial grounds that knowledge consists of sets of propositions that are true, while belief consists of sets of propositions, some of which may be true and others false. Plato goes on to propose a hierarchical framework, whereby belief is subdivided into a lower form of belief, imagination (eikasia), and a higher form of belief, confidence (pistis). Above these lies a lower form of knowledge, thought (dianoia), and a higher form of knowledge, understanding (nous). Progression through this hierarchy is achieved through dialectic. Plato (2013b) uses the famous analogy of the prisoners in the cave in Book 7 of The Republic to help distinguish imagination (eikasia) from confidence (pistis). Those who are confined to imagination (eikasia) do not realise that what they are observing are simply shadows of artificial objects, whereas those who have been brought up to confidence (pistis) have the necessary reasoning powers to distinguish between the shadows and the objects of which they are shadows. Thought (dianoia) enables people to formulate hypotheses, draw conclusions from them and, by establishing the explanatory power of their hypotheses through the coherence of the results derived from them, attain a lower form of knowledge. The possessor of thought (dianoia), however, has knowledge only of a particular body of knowledge. Progression from thought (dianoia) to understanding (nous) is achieved by comprehending the coherence of a particular body of knowledge and its systemic articulation with the whole of reality.

Irrespective of the detailed interpretation of Plato’s discussion, it is clear that he demands the ability to offer a high standard of explanation before he will acknowledge anyone’s claim to have knowledge of either the lower or the higher sort. Plato (2013b, p.37) complains that a sophist ‘teaches nothing but the ordinary beliefs of the majority of people which they promulgate whenever they meet together, and which they call wisdom’. The claim to wisdom that is made for the poets is no stronger than that made by the sophists for themselves.

Management Consultants as Story-Tellers

The academic literature emphasises the extent to which management consultancy knowledge is socially constructed, that is, its status as legitimate knowledge is dependent on clients’ and other stakeholders’ acceptance of it as such (Nikolova et al. 2009). It therefore has nothing to commend it beyond the wisdom that the sophists claim to have (Plato 2013b). Clark and Salaman (1998) compare management consultants with theatrical performers, who create an appealing front-stage illusion for their audience that is sustained by a back-stage reality which, if revealed to the audience, would dispel the illusion. These writers’ analysis of the consultant-client relationship invites comparison with the relationship of Plato’s (2013a) sight-lovers (philotheamones) and lovers of listening (philekooi) with the performers of tragedy and comedy and the reciters of dramatic poetry. The literature highlights the extent to which consultants manage their clients’ impressions of their expertise (Clark and Salaman 1998), the opportunities for which are heightened by the typically intangible nature of consultancy outputs, and the consequent subjectivity of clients’ assessment of their work (Wright and Kitay 2002). Consultants’ rhetoric emphasises claims to expertise that clients are likely to find desirable, such as the ability to provide innovative solutions to complex managerial problems (Wright et al. 2012), even though these claims to innovativeness are open to question (Wright et al. 2012). Consultants’ claims to creativity and innovation are in any event at odds with their claims to formal, professional knowledge in that, as Alvesson (1993) observes, creativity and innovation are needed only when formal, professional knowledge fails. Consultants’ use of rhetoric to persuade clients of the legitimacy of their knowledge claims is, therefore, central to their roles because of the ambiguous nature of that knowledge (Alvesson 1993). Management consultancy knowledge is constituted in large measure of credible stories (Legge 2002).

Werr and Stjernberg (2003) identify two principal, codified components of management consultancy knowledge, that is, first, methods and tools and, second, documentation of completed consultancy projects including case studies based on them, which underpin management consultancy services alongside the experience of individual consultants. The academic literature suggests that each of these two types of codified knowledge are infused with rhetoric and story-telling. Managers’ anxieties and uncertainties as to the future of their organisations and their own careers are important contributors to their demand for the new ideas that consultants offer to the market, and embody in continually renewed methods and tools. Consultants’ rhetoric is designed both to implant a sense of uncertainty in managers’ minds as to their ability to succeed without consultancy support, and to relieve that uncertainty by offering services, which only they can provide, that would alleviate the sources of their uncertainty (Heusinkveld and Visscher 2012; Sturdy 1997). While acknowledging the influential role of sociopsychological factors in the emergence of fashionable management concepts, Abrahamson (1996) emphasises that the rhetoric underpinning them must also respond to technoeconomic considerations by holding out the prospect of both improvements on existing practices and rational, efficient means of achieving managers’ objectives. Fincham (2002) points out that consultants’ rhetoric embodies the notion that they have rational, scientifically-based methods that enable them reliably to solve clients’ problems by following linear, step-by-step procedures. He observes that these methods are supported by consultancy tools that appear to simplify and make soluble the problems that managers face. Consultants’ methods typically are associated with the use of traditional project management methods, involving rational, linear, step-by-step procedures (Molloy and Whittington 2005). Van Nistelrooij et al. (2007) find that consultants in practice generally use methods involving planned activities directed towards pre-specified results, even though they themselves tend to doubt their efficacy. Leybourne (2006) draws attention to the extent to which project managers of organisational change assignments of necessity improvise upon their project plans as they manage their delivery, while at the same time traditionally downplaying such improvisation as a sign of weak and unsuccessful project management. Ashton (2020) quotes John Houston, Chief Executive of Deloitte and himself a management consultant, as saying, ‘Whatever you do in life, things go wrong. It is as much about how you manage that and navigate the organisation as it is trying to prevent things going wrong in the first place.’ Management consultancy approaches, methods, tools and techniques are often no more than stories that appeal to clients’ desire for rational, linear and singular solutions to their complex and intractable managerial problems (Fincham 2002). Case studies of high-profile, successful projects that consultants have undertaken, as well as lists of well-known clients, are important elements in the rhetoric that consultants use to persuade their clients of the benefits that they should expect from their services and of the reliability of their methods and tools (Abrahamson 1996; Alvesson 1993; Legge 2002). Fincham (2005) points out that the case studies that consultants present are simplified accounts that provide insufficient justification for the beliefs that they propagate about how and why the claimed outcomes have been achieved.

Reflecting on an academic career devoted to processual studies of organisational change, Pettigrew (2012) highlights the inadequacy of accounts of organisational change that are based on simple, incremental, linear sequences of planning and implementation. He also reflects on the interconnectedness of the factors that influence organisational performance, and the need for holistic and systemic, not isolated and singular, solutions to organisational problems. Pettigrew et al. (2001) highlight the extent to which plans have to be adapted and changed when exposed to the ever-shifting contexts in which organisational change is implemented in practice. They draw attention to the contribution of complementarities theory in explaining the performance benefits of holistic and systemic programmes of organisational change, in that increasing investment in certain organisational change processes can add to the gains from increases in others, and by contrast the negative performance effects that can arise from isolated and singular change initiatives of the kind that consultancy projects sometimes represent. In summary, Pettigrew seems to be in step with Plato’s (2013a, b) account of knowledge and belief, in that he counsels managers to be wary of speciously simple, rational, linear approaches to solving organisational problems, and to privilege action on an enterprise-wide scale that is informed by a systemic, holistic understanding of organisational performance over isolated interventions informed only by limited, function-specific understanding.

The Management Consultants and the Poets

Just as Plato was concerned about the state of mind that the poets induced in their audiences, so might management scholars be concerned about the state of mind that management consultants induce in their clients. An analysis of the possible states of belief and knowledge, as Plato (2013b) defines them, that management consultants might engender in their clients’ minds is set out in Table 1.

Table 1 Belief and knowledge states that consultants induce in their clients’ minds
Full size table

Morris and Empson (1998, p.619) quote a consultant from a change management consultancy firm as saying: ‘There is a kind of magic to what we do with our clients. I can’t really describe it to you. I certainly can’t write it down on a piece of paper.’ This quotation suggests a low level within Plato’s (2013b) account of belief, in that no account at all can be offered as to how or why the consultancy intervention should be expected to be beneficial to the client. The clients of such consultants are asked to believe in shadows. They have attained only the lower of the two stages of belief, that is, imagination (eikasia), and they have no means of justifying their belief that the consultants will actually be able to help them to achieve their objectives.

Many clients are liable to pay attention to the various approaches, methods, tools and techniques that management consultants promote, and to believe in them as rational, efficient and perhaps scientifically based means of achieving their objectives (Fincham 2002). Such clients have attained the higher of the two stages of belief, that is, confidence (pistis), because they are able to apply some level of reasoning to their appreciation of the relationship between the approaches, methods, tools and techniques that the consultants will use and the potential performance benefits to be expected from the consultants’ intervention. They may be aware of particular projects in which consultants have used these approaches, methods, tools and techniques, and the outcomes of those projects. They nevertheless remain unable to explain how and why these consultancy projects produced the outcomes that they did, or to justify their belief that the consultants will actually be able to help them achieve their objectives.

Sophisticated clients may appraise the approaches, methods, tools and techniques that their consultants propose to use to help them improve performance in a particular aspect of their business in the light of established theoretical knowledge about what works in that particular field. Such clients have attained the lower of the two stages of knowledge, that is, thought (dianoia), because they can justify their belief that the consultants will be able to improve the performance of the particular aspect of their business in which they have been hired to assist by reference to established organisational theory. They are limited to this lower form of knowledge because they have not understood that, as Pettigrew et al. (2001) point out, isolated interventions in a particular aspect of a business may not only fail to improve performance, but may actually make it worse, and that a coordinated programme of complementary change initiatives on a systemic, enterprise-wide scale is necessary to achieve major improvements in organisational performance.

The most sophisticated clients may appraise the approaches, methods, tools and techniques that their consultants propose to use in the light of established theoretical knowledge about what can work, not only in a particular field, but in all the interrelationships between functions across the whole of their business. Such clients have a holistic, systemic understanding of the causes of organisational performance of the kind explained by Pettigrew et al. (2001), and they have attained the higher of the two stages of knowledge, that is, understanding (nous). They can justify their insight that the consultants’ intervention can lead to improvement in their overall organisational performance, and not only in a particular aspect of their business in which they have hired the consultants to assist.

Much of the criticism of management consultants in the academic literature is associated with consultancy practices that oversimplify complex managerial problems, and consultants’ claims that they can be solved reliably using rational, set-by-step processes (Fincham 2002). In these circumstances, it would not be surprising if consultants were to leave their clients in a state of belief – not knowing whether their faith in their consultants was justified or not – rather than in a state of knowledge. Plato’s insistence on reasoning from hypotheses, rather than on observation of particular instances, as a condition of any form of knowledge, places heavy demands on both clients and their consultants. Kieser and Leiner (2009) argue that what managers require is not knowledge that has been justified rigorously and scientifically, but readily accessible information that is both relevant to the decisions that they have to take, and available within the timescales upon which those decisions have to be taken. Managers inevitably make decisions in conditions of uncertainty, so that typically they are unlikely to be able to attain actual, truth-entailing knowledge, and reasonable beliefs are likely to be at the limit of their aspirations. Therefore, while ascent to the highest stage of belief or knowledge that is attainable might be a manager’s aim, neither clients nor their consultants can justly be blamed if that ascent often does not reach very high in typical business conditions.

Plato’s criticism of the poets, however, relates not so much to their inability to impart knowledge in itself as to their unwarranted authority, their use of emotional appeal to persuade their audiences that their fictions are real, and above all their use of rhetorical devices rather than logical justifications for their knowledge claims. Management consultants routinely assume the authoritative status of professionals, and are accepted as such, even though consultancy lacks many of the characteristics of the traditional professions, such as an established body of professional knowledge in which members of the profession have to be accredited, and regulation by a professional body (Greiner and Ennsfellner 2010; Harvey et al. 2017). They use rhetoric and story-telling to promote the false impression that they can solve complex, intractable managerial problems by using approaches, methods, tools and techniques consisting of rational, linear, step-by-step procedures (Fincham 2005). This rhetoric and story-telling includes simplified case studies that narrate claimed successes using their approaches, methods, tools and techniques, and lists of successful, high-profile past clients designed to implant in the minds of potential future clients the desire to become members of such a desirable and exclusive club (Legge 2002).

From Story-Telling (muthos) to Account-Giving (logos) Consultancy

Just as Plato (2013b, p.437) refers to the ‘long-standing dispute between philosophy and poetry’, Abrahamson (1996, p.275) speaks of the ‘competition between sociopsychological and technoeconomic forces’ that shapes the management fashions that consultants and other management fashion-setters promote. These conflicts between opposed forces, however, are not exactly parallel. The poets’ use of story-telling and rhetoric is inherent in the art of poetry, and the poet has no business claiming to be anything more than a creative artist. Abrahamson (1996), on the other hand, argues that responding to clients’ technoeconomic demands, as well as to their sociopsychological desires, is an inherent part of the management fashion-setter’s role. There is no need for management consultants utterly to fall foul of Plato’s objections to the poets but, if they are to avoid doing so, they must make a decisive shift away from story-telling (muthos) and towards account-giving (logos). Abrahamson (1996) argues that management scholars should engage more actively with management consultants so as to encourage the emergence of management fashions that offer a real response to technoeconomic concerns and are more beneficial to their clients. Nees and Greiner (1985) advocate action by clients to interrogate their consultants about their work, so as to induce them to reveal a clear account of how they can assist them and why it should be accepted that what they propose to do will work in practice.

Pettigrew (2003) observes that, in order for management scholars to engage effectively with management practitioners and help them improve their practice, they have to meet the challenge identified by Kieser and Leiner (2009), that is, to produce research that is both rigorous and relevant and accessible to a managerial audience. In order to assist in doing this, in leading the Innovative Forms of Organising Research Programme, aimed at discovering how far new ways of organising were emerging, Pettigrew (2003, p.370) formed a collaborative relationship with one of the ‘Big Four’ consultancy and accountancy firms, whereby he involved the firm as a ‘co-producer and disseminator of knowledge’. While one of the firm’s motivations in the collaboration was to receive help in promoting its services, it also sought outputs from the research in the form of rigorously justified consultancy methods, tools and techniques, and evidence as to how and why they could be effective. While this collaborative arrangement was not without missteps, Pettigrew’s generally positive observations on it argue for greater investment by management consultants in this type of collaboration, so as to enable them to offer services for which they can give a more rigorous as well as a more persuasive account.

Clients themselves might follow Socrates’s lead by conducting a searching dialogue with their management consultants, that is, by engaging with their consultants’ story-telling (muthos) as if it were account-giving (logos). Nees and Greiner (1985) argue that, before appointing consultants to undertake a project for them, clients should ask them to give accounts of similar projects that they have undertaken previously for other clients, and should also contact some of their past clients as an additional source of insights into the consultants’ work. Involvement of several managers in decision-making about the appointment of management consultants also has value as a form of triangulation, whereby a more diverse range of perspectives can be brought to bear on the issues (Mitchell 1994; Nees and Greiner 1985). Clients should also approach the involvement of management consultants in their business only after clarifying the issue that their consultants are to address which, inter alia, can be a safeguard against succumbing to the rhetoric of consultants seeking to define the clients’ problems so as to match their firms’ capabilities rather than the clients’ needs (Nees and Greiner 1985).

Conclusion

There are striking parallels between Plato’s (2013a, b) discrimination between the different levels of knowledge and belief – especially as between thought (dianoia) and understanding (nous) – and the work of management scholars such as Pettigrew on the insights needed to attain high organisational performance. There are striking parallels also between Plato’s criticisms of the poets’ knowledge claims and those that management scholars make of consultants’ knowledge claims. These include criticisms of management consultancy as a form of theatre, in which clients, like Plato’s (2013a) sight-lovers (philotheamones) and lovers of listening (philekooi), are persuaded by consultants’ performances, and criticisms of consultants’ reliance on socially constructed knowledge whose legitimacy, like the wisdom of the sophists, is supported solely by people’s willingness to accept it as such.

Plato’s criticisms of the poets, however, are motivated by a popular belief that the poets are something that they are not. They are popularly revered for their perceived ability to educate people in morality and truths about life, whereas in fact they are creative artists whose primary function is to entertain. While management scholars criticise consultants for using misleading rhetoric and story-telling to sell services and manage clients’ impressions of their quality, there is no fundamental necessity for consultancy work to be conducted in such a way as to be open to this criticism. In the competition to which Abrahamson (1996) refers between technoeconomic and sociopsychological forces, consultants have too often given primacy to sociopsychological considerations. The remedy for this state of affairs is a greater emphasis on the use of dialectic among consultants and their clients to get at the truth of the matter, and on collaborative relationships between consultants and management scholars aimed at bringing higher forms of knowledge to bear on management consultancy practice.