Comparing the Role of External Business Consultants with Internal Managers

This essay compares and contrasts the role of external business consultants with that of an internal manager, along with the ethical issues they face while working with organizations.

BUSINESS PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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Individual critical essay
When organisations require special assistance’s, they choose one from two common
options: make a contract with external business consultant or employ an internal manager.
While internal manager’s act as a human capital of the firm, external consultants are not
considered as a perpetual part of the firms. Internal consultants are appointed on the pay roll
basis and shows keen interest in organisational objectives, whereas external consultants are
contracted for specific reasons or to fulfil desired task on commission basis who leaves the
firm once the targeted job is accomplished. Both the choices share one common goal i.e.
fulfilling organisational objectives or accomplishing those tasks which satisfies
organisational needs. This essay will compare and contrast the role of external business
consultants with that of an internal manager to consider what kind of role are performed by
each one of them along with finding ethical issues they face while working with the
organisations.
Consulting is a phenomenon which is used by contemporary organisations to access
risks, conduct arbitration and achieve consensus in which the role of an external business
consultant provides organisation with expert advice to improve the organisation’s
management process implementation and to increase their ability for understanding their
mission and role in bringing future development. Business consultant’s may be involved by
the organisation for several purposes like for improving human resource departments,
marketing and sales function, finance or for increasing overall organisational productivity.
These consultants cover wider scope for solving issues faced by organisations while placing
or adopting modern business functions or for any other specific reason depending upon
organisation’s requirements (Vukotić, Aničić, & Vukotić, 2017). Internal mangers, on the
other hand typically performs four overarching roles: planning, organising business functions,
leading and controlling. They perform their roles while gaining trust and cooperation for the

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management alongside seeking employers trust to provide organisations with effective
performance. They participate in planning, organisation related activities that leverages new
and meaningful ideas while indicating those implications that may affect organisation in
future course. Organisation’s also ensure allowing their managers to get fully engaged with
organisational functions and therefore allows them to take part in critical decision making
and activities that cannot be performed by external consultants (Rao & Srinivasulu, 2013).
Being a conventional manager, they are primarily responsible for managing overall
departments while performing basic managerial activities and other operational functions like
selection, recruitment and training etc. An internal manger plays integral role within
organisation’s and for enabling human relations for better organisational performance.
Usually, they report to top executives in larger firms, however, in small companies these
managers might either hold the ownership or directly report to the business owners. Internal
mangers are also liable to develop and implement budgets along with preparing reports for
senior management to ensure that every departments are complying with organisational
policies (Hiekkataipale & Lamsa, 2016). Furthermore, the size of the organisation determines
what kind of roles are required to be performed by their managers. For example, in big
organisation, a manager who is responsible for managing production department might need
to direct related teams who looks after output and scheduling of workers. Some managers
may perform activities related to human resources like performance evaluation, recruiting and
hiring talented workforce, etc. Internal manager’s motivate employees through rewards and
incentives along with enabling positive feedback and when such performance is not met
efficiently, they provide top executives with evaluation report that can further improve
organisational productivity (Kelchner, 2019).
External business consultant’s, on the other hand are those people who performs
independently and are not accountable to the firm’s once their task is accomplished.

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Basically, for organisations they are an added supplement to their existing teams who
requires assistance while the consultants are not given any authority to make changes without
taking advice from permanent staff or authorised department. The business consultant
performs the role of advisory service which means, they are not hired for managing
organisations or for taking critical decisions, rather for providing specific service (Srinivasan,
2014). They take responsibility regarding validity and quality of advice provided by them to
ensure that they give right advice at right time and in correct order for fulfilling business
needs. For the same, they collect required data from different departments as per their task
requirements to analyse them critically and take error free decisions. The business consultant
needs to poses professional skills and knowledge that are essential for addressing
organisational issues. Since these consultants work for various organisations, that are enabled
with thorough experience and skills and thus utilises their collected experiences for
conducting their roles in improved manner. To give advice on operational matters, these
consultants constantly improves their methodologies and techniques, including adaptation to
innovation and technologies for assisting organisations with updated and valid solutions.
The internal managers may experience various issues in the organisation and feel
stressed while juggling with disparate requirements of openness and confidentiality.
Compared to external consultants who poses wider network and reputation to meet their
requirements, internal managers often face isolation (Oliveira, Escrivão, Nagano, Ferraudo,
& Rosim, 2015). Moreover, internal managers have to face difficult ethical situations each
day while they attempt to perform their role since organisation’s management decisions
usually involves critical decisions concerning business ethics. For the same, they are
supposed to be reasonable before taking any ethical decisions similar to providing a
reasonable view behind taking any managerial decisions that involves legal actions. In fact,
most of the times, ethic-laden situations come along with other issues which clearly reflects

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correct or wrong judgement that further justifies manager’s capabilities while analysing
business code of conduct (Nuseir & Ghandour, 2019). Though most of the decisions taken by
internal mangers are legal, there are situations where they need to go beyond legal boundaries
to justify and handle the issues by crossing legal boundaries. Assuming that business law is a
must, every decision is not actually ethically problematic, but to make them sound ethical, the
decision taken by managers does not remains quite clear many times thereby making few
decisions unethical for which the managers have to face various consequences (Waddock,
2012). Jamnik (2017) finds, “When does a manager face an ethical issue?” (p. 92). The
author claims that today’s managers faces various ethical dilemmas that can be differentiated
according to the levels in which they take place. Managers experiences such issues at
personal, organisational, societal, professional, and global levels that are further categorised
under several situations. Moreover, conflicts between managements or its managers interests
arises issues between them and stakeholders’ groups like suppliers, business competitors,
customers, supervisors, government and other who remains closely related with the
organisation.
Like internal manager’s, external business consultants also encounter various ethical
dilemmas while they serve or give advice to their clients or the organisations who hires them
for specific purpose, including donor companies. For instance, sensitive detailing of the task
performed may reveal to them confidential and critical data concerning their previous clients
or present organisations operation or other organisational strategies that may be misused for
personal use. Such trust related conflicts may take place when financial or personal interest of
the consultants’ conflicts with that of organisations with whom they work with ( Sato &
Gnanaratnam, 2014). Most of the ethical issues faced by consultants arise from myriad of
compromising circumstances, including breach of client confidentiality and scope of services
offered along with other billing and service pay related issue. Organisation’s expect their

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consultants’ to be competent, professional and set higher code of conduct by offering
disciplined work and considering ethics while rendering actions to serve organisation’s
purposes. However, it is not just consultant’s who needs to comply for every ethical
behaviour rather, organisation’s also needs to understand their responsibility for enforcing
and developing a commonly understood ethical guideline that does not take any form of
ethical misinterpretation. Furthermore, the growth and uncertainty within business
environment have led itself to the rise of wider diversity skill and orientation that has
possibly led an increase in responsibilities of consultants. Such diversity may lead distortion
of collected data thereby resulting in ethical inconsistency faced by consultants as well as the
organisations.
The most critical role performed by external consultant is enabling a link between
theory and practice within organisation and thus, in literature, management consulting service
providers are often considered as disciplined, systematic and hard work who are more
concerned with solid facts and research for solving problems in best possible ways. Though
organisation’s internal managers get easier entry, steady payroll, freedom to move from one
department to the other, enhanced relationships, informal contracts and familiarity with
organisational system, they have to face various obligations also like working together with
other employees, performing daily monotonous routine work, possibility of facing client’s
retaliations etc. The above essay identified various roles performed by external business
consultant and an internal manager and finds that both of them shares one common goal of
serving organisation, however, faces different kind of issues while performing their role.
Both the choices can assist organisations from planning mergers and acquisitions to finance,
business process management and other critical tasks. As compared to external consultants,
internal manger also functions competently and thus both of them remains indispensable part
of today’s organisations.

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References
Hiekkataipale , M.-M., & Lamsa, A.-M. (2016). The Ethical Problems of Middle Managers
and Their Perceived Organisational Consequences. Transformations in Business &
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Jamnik, A. (2017). The Challenges of Business Ethics: The Basic Principles of Business
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Kelchner, L. (2019). Job Descripion & Responsibilities of a Business Manager. Retrieved
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Nuseir, M., & Ghandour, A. (2019). Ethical issues in modern business management.
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Oliveira, J. d., Escrivão, E., Nagano, M. S., Ferraudo, A. S., & Rosim, D. (2015). What do
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