Dealing with Confidence

How are the services and expertise of external management advisors brought into organizations? Based on studies of the use of management consulting, financial consulting, legal services, and IT services, this book sheds light on how needs in organizations for management advice services are constructed and why certain service suppliers are given trust to deliver. While the current literature on the purchasing of professional services has highlighted the individual interaction between buyers and suppliers in building necessary trust for a deal, this book focuses on their embeddedness in organizational and institutional structures within which service characteristics and confidence in individual suppliers is constructed. Dealing with Confidence covers studies of the practice of individual managers hiring their trusted advisors, organizations' efforts to professionalize their purchasing routines, and the advisers' efforts to become representatives of a professional collective.