Rethinking Management Consulting: Towards Integral Consulting

This article aims to transform the current approach to management consultancy so as to be in tune with the needs of business and societies of our time. Such transformation is necessary so that consultancies are enabled to integrate technological, economic and social innovation as opposed to the conventional form of business and technology alignment. It would then act as enabler for such social innovation, with a view to building a healthy, sustainable enterprise, able to meaningfully engage with the most burning social issues of the society in which it is involved. Social innovation, however, requires co-creation between the consultancy, enterprises, business schools and communities. Such a consultancy, so the core argument of this article goes, is indeed ideally positioned to reconnect these diverse parties. Hence, the evolution of management consultancy towards an integrating force; such an approach is called “Integral Consulting”. For Integral Consulting to happen, four core gaps need to be closed. The article describes these four gaps, and illustrates, in theory and in practice, how these gaps can be bridged. In what follows, the case of Integral Consulting is featured, emerging within Deutsche Telekom’s consulting affiliate, Detecon International, in co-creation with TRANS4M, a Geneva based laboratory for social innovation.