Business schools experiment with consulting

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Most business school professors make their living by delivering training programs to students and executives on campus. But Daniel Beunza, professor of social studies of finance at Bayes Business School in London, he takes his experience beyond the classroom through a consultancy practice that applies academic knowledge directly to the business world.

Bayes Consulting, based at the school, is an advisory service that provides bespoke solutions for businesses, including those based in the City of London. It’s one of several academic consulting practices bringing business schools into more direct competition with traditional firms, such as the Boston Consulting Group.

Professor Beunza’s work has included advising the Financial Services Culture Board (FSCB), a membership organization created in the aftermath of the financial crisis to prevent misconduct. He taught executives of several financial institutions members of the FSCB how to conduct cultural analysis on the ground, or “ethnographic” research.

This revealed different problems in their approaches to reforming the culture. For example, making compliance training videos mandatory simply turned them into a “box ticking” exercise, leading to disconnected viewing. Customers are now looking to diagnose other problems. “You can’t regulate the existence of a good culture, but ethnography can help raise banking standards,” says Professor Beunza.

His proposals stem from his studies of the social interactions of derivatives traders: research feats that turned out to be a decisive factor in the FSCB’s hiring. “Rigor was incredibly important to us, in terms of the way we collect data and how we use it,” says Kate Coombs, FSCB’s chief insights officer. “That’s why academics were naturally our first point of call.”

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Several other business schools have established consulting practices, although it remains a niche activity. from Germany Frankfurt School of Finance and Management has run an international consulting business since the early 1990s. Durham University School of Businessin the North East of England, also offers academic expertise on a consultancy basis.

Some academics hope that these services can increase the adoption of academic concepts in business practice. Research is often criticized for not penetrating beyond academic journals into the corporate sector, but consulting helps faculty bridge the gap between theory and practice.

“We are not sitting in an ivory tower,” emphasizes Santi Furnari, associate dean for executive education at Bayes (formerly Cass) at the City, University of London. The line between advisory services and executive education, creating open enrollment and customized training courses for corporate clients, is becoming increasingly blurred.

Research is often criticized for not penetrating. . . business sector, but consultancy helps teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice

The question is, how much do they cannibalize each other? There has to be a face [presented] to the customer but, internally, it can create some turf wars,” says Nils Stieglitz, president of the Frankfurt School. He adds, however, that the consulting business can complement executive education through cross-selling, if the offerings are different.

The academic consulting boom comes as business schools face increasingly stiff competition from consulting firms like Korn Ferry and McKinsey & Company, which are jumping into the executive education market at a time of great demand for non-degree programs for senior managers.

Some business schools are now taking on consultants at their own game. Fiona Czerniawska, chief executive of Source, a consulting industry analyst, says academics can bring their specialist expertise to the industry. “Consulting is very competitive: you can compete at scale or with a special proposition. What doesn’t work is launching a business school consultancy that is generalist,” she adds.

Some academic leaders see more room for collaboration than rivalry with consulting firms. Patrick De Greve, CEO of Vlerick School of Business in Belgium, he says that consultants are important strategic partners, often funding research projects and getting involved to help teach programs that need industry expertise. Providing advisory services would put these business relationships at risk, she argues. “We are not going to bite the hand that feeds us.”

Consulting can complement executive education, if the offers are different

Still, the idea of ​​going into consulting is appealing at a time when demand is holding up despite economic pressures and some layoffs at consulting firms, according to Source. From digital transformations to sustainability strategies, there are ample opportunities to sell advice to clients. But for some schools, this isn’t purely a business opportunity; it is also a way to fulfill its social mission.

At the Frankfurt School, scholars have been working to improve access to financial services in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For the past decade, they have been advising FPM, a financial inclusion fund, on how to help institutions target small and medium-sized businesses and low-income populations in the Central African nation.

“What we have done is help reduce poverty and improve living conditions,” says Jean-Claude Thetika, managing director of FPM. The Frankfurt School designed courses for the fund, which trained 3,500 managers of Congolese financial institutions in offering microfinance and banking for small and medium-sized enterprises. The school also helped FPM design digital products for these institutions, including mobile banking, to broaden the reach of financial services.

Despite the clear potential for real-world impact, schools say some faculty still view consultancy as merely a distraction from their core teaching and research activities, underscoring a recruitment challenge that may limit the scale of offerings. of the schools.

“All my academic colleagues are absolutely adamant,” says Joanna Berry, associate dean for external engagement at the Durham business school. “So making a case for spending time consulting is very difficult to do. It is intensive in terms of cost and labor, but it is important.

“The goal is to deploy that intellectual capital that we generate in ways that benefit society,” he adds. “We can generate all the theories we want, but if we don’t make a difference in the real world, then that research is wasted.”