Page 71 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

organisation’s executives. Client-consulting relationship causes issues regarding consulting engagements. Personal characteristics of the client, their values, willingness to learn, brightness, ability to catch on new concepts quickly, accept feed-back non- defensively, as well as willingness to take a risk and be responsible to follow through the consultant’s advices should also be taken into consideration. Contact person’s characteristics including role clarity, respect for their competence, liking each other and independent decision making, respect of superiors and access to political information are also important (Kellogg, 1984). Additionally, orientation towards results, intellectual curiosity, optimism, self-confidence and ambition have been highlighted by Carlucci and Tetenbaum (2000) as client’s attributes most consistently appearing on consultant’s wish list.
Ajmal, Nordström, and Helo (2009) found that the assessment of the efficiency of a business consultancy should be conducted for at least three reasons. First, “consulting as a business tool” should be validated. Business organisations may use consulting service to improve its results, among other facilitating business tools. A formal comparison between available alternative options is recommended. Second, the costs incurred by consulting should be justified. Consulting services, as a costly investment in organisation’s professionalism and profitability, need quantitative substantiation, especially in downturn periods of the economy. Third, the design of consulting should be improved. A continuous evaluation of the quality of the consulting programs is required to ensure the delivery of the improved value and benefits for organisations. The majority of organisations conduct the assessment in monetary terms to evaluate the result of projects. However, this calculation of the Return of Investment (ROI) for projects does not include the non-financial elements, such as the opinion of employees, the effect of learning and a possible adjustment of attitude and behaviour among staff.
Learning experience of consultants and business trainers shows that conflicting values occur between different NCs and OCs. It can be assumed that the recipient’s willingness and receptivity for new knowledge is conditional for the engagement in the transfer of knowledge. From the transmitters being engaged in an open process will be requested for adaptation of new directions to KT (Shenkar & Li, 1999).
In general, the transferred knowledge is readily accepted and implemented after being adapted to the specific, local environment and conditions. Testing of the level of internationalism and understanding of the knowledge, disseminated in the transfer process is important and necessary. The acquired knowledge will be ensured when it is
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