Extending Schein's client typology

Schein has this categorisation of clients:

• contact,
• intermediate,
• primary,
• unwitting,
• indirect and
• ultimate clients.

Contact clients are individuals who first contact the consultant. Intermediate clients are individuals or groups who get involved through meetings and other activities. Primary clients are those who own and manage the problem and may pay the bill. Ultimate clients are those whose welfare other clients and the consultant must consider. Unwitting clients are those related to the primary client but are unaware that they will be impacted. Indirect clients are those who are aware that they will be affected by consultancy interventions but either the consultancy or other clients do not know about them.

However, some researchers (like Sturdy) suggest that this model can be extended to include other clients, like ignored clients - those the consultant knows about, but discounts. "Proscribed clients" is the term that Sturdy uses, being people who are excluded from a change process through political manoeuvering.

Interesting. I wonder how much the public sector does this. And surely proscribed clients would be difficult to identify through research, because of the politics that proscribes them.

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STURDY, A., CLARK, T., FINCHAM, R. & HANDLEY, K. (2009) Between innovation and legitimation - boundaries and knowledge flow in management consultancy. Organization.
STURDY, A., HANDLEY, K., FINCHAM, R. & CLARK, T. (2009) Management consultancy : boundaries and knowledge in action, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Clients & consultants as prisoners

Axelrod's Evolution of Cooperation could offer an alternative framework - I could take the relationship of clients and consultants from an economic perspective, value being added depending on they cooperate through an extended version of the iterating prisoner's dilemma. How fascinating!

But would it be engagement?

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Axelrod, R. (1990) The evolution of cooperation, Penguin, London.
Robert Axelrod, not Richard Axelrod who writes about engagement from a practitioner perspective

Axelrod on engaging with clients

How should a consultant engage with clients?

Axelrod says through

• widening the circle of involvement
• connecting people to each other
• create communities for action
• embracing democratic principles

I shall look for these activities in my research. But will it be the consultants or the clients who do these?

His advice to create communities is interesting because it suggests the communities of practice that Wenger writes about.

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Axelrod, R. H. (2001) Terms of engagement: changing the way we change organizations, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco. 936
Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: a brief introduction. Available from: http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro_WRD.doc from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ [Accessed 8/08/ 2008].

Interview questions

This writing an interview proforma isn't getting done quickly. A matrix or table might be useful, one that related to consultant-consultant, client-client, consultant-client and client-consultant, like the table in the NAO paper.

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{NAO, 2006 #109}

Matching accountability to clients

After listening to a colleague's presentation of her MRes research on stakeholder understanding of museum value, I was stimulated to thinking how her seven types of values might be tabulated against types of stakeholder. Similarly, I could cross tabulate Schein's types of clients against Boven's types of accountabilities.

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• Bovens, M. 2007. Analysing and Assessing Accountability: A Conceptual Framework. European Law Journal, 13(4): 447-468.

• Schein, E. 1997. The concept of “client” from a process consultation perspective: a guide for change agents. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 109 (3): 202-216.