The Impact of Management Consultancies on Small Scale Business Development
NATURE OF CONSULTING
Consultancy is a two- way interaction between two or more persons organization. One of participants in the interaction usually has a specific problem, a solution or help to which he hopes the other participant has by virtue of his knowledge and practice in relation to the problem at hand.
This interaction has been described by Lippert and Lippet (1978:9) as a process of seeking giving and receiving help. Consultancy has been in existence as long as man, however, only in the last couple of decides has formal professional training been introduced in the field. But, earliest known consultant or helpers were tribal Wiseman, medicine men and priests who developed skill in personal or group in problem solving. Although there was no formal professional training programme for these roles, there were apprenticeship and selection for talent.
Lippert and Lippert (1978) said that in later years, charismatic leaders such as Buddha, Christ, Mohammed and confiscus developed a circle of followers who, through role modeling, conceptual training and some supervised practice, developed helping orientation and skill and presented themselves to people as helpers and changing agents.
Kubar (1977:12) noted that over the years consulting has developed as an external and internal service, as seen from the viewpoint of the client system.
An external consultant is administratively and legally fully independent of the organization for which he works, while the internal consultant is part of the particular organizational entity.
2.2 AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONSULTING PROCESS
Kubar (1977:3) defined the consulting process as the consultants and client joint activity aimed at solving the desired changes in the client organization.
Kubr identified five phases in the consulting process: entry, diagnosis, action planning, implementation and termination.
PHASES OF THE CONSULTING PROCESS
- ENTRY: First contact with client preliminary problem diagnosis, assignment planning and assignment proposal to client.
- DIAGNOSIS: Fact finding fact analysis and synthesis detailed problem examination
III. ACTION PLANNING: Developing solutions evaluating alternative planning implementation.
- IMPLEMENTATIONS: Assisting with implementation adjusting proposals training.
- TERMINATION: Evaluation final report setting commitments plans for follow-up with drawl.
- SOURECE: Kubr M. management consulting (1977:14) prof. 110 genera.
- ENTRY: This is the first phase where the consultant starts works with the client. Discussions are made on the charges the client would like to make in his organization and how the consultant can help him
This phase lays down the foundations of every thing that follows, since the subsequent phases are influenced by the quality of the work done.
The consultant’s performance during the assignment, the approach taken the changes made and the results achieved have to be evaluated by both the client and the consulting organizations.
2.3 DEFINITION OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTING
Steele (1975:13) defines consulting in this ways “By the consulting process I mean any form of providing help of the content, process, or structure of a task or series of tasks, where the consultant is not actually responsible for doing the task, but is helping those who are”.
Austin (1965:5) noted that the function of management services sometimes known as business advisory services; management consulting or management engineers, it to help a business more towards an objectives, almost the maximization of profit.
According to Greiner and Metzger (1983:7) management consulting is an advisory services contracted for and provide to organizations by specially trained and qualified person who assist, in an objective and independent manner the client organization to identify the demand for management consulting services comes from all sectors of human activity and from all types of organization because all are undergoing economic and social pressure to improve their management and attain higher standards of performance and efficiency
THE POTENTIAL CLIENT OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTING.
Lippert and Lippert (1978:5) classified them into eleven client systems as follows:
- Educational system: Business, industry, chambers of commerce, associations.
- Educational system, school colleges adult education programmes, state department of education.
iii. Political system: Political parties, city governments League of women voters, governor’s offices.
- Religions system: Churches, seminaries monasteries.
- Recreation and leisure: Time system recreational programmes, agencies park, camps, and hob by clients.
- Cultural environment system: Theatres museums, Arts, schools, musical societies.
vii. Welfare system: Hospitals, clinics, health education right yet innately distasteful to management and to be more acceptable when made by an outside.
ADVANTAGES OF USING INTERNAL CONSULTANTS
He is competence is already known to the company. He is familiar with the personalities involved and may be better able to present recommendations to make them acceptable to specific individuals. After study is completed and there commendations, implemented, he will still be at hand to answer further questions and resolve further problems.
2.7 REQUIREMENT OF MANAGEMENT
CONSULTANTS.
The American management association (175:17-20) listed these criteria: academic training applied experience, comparable position help in industry, personality characteristics and results adduced in previous assignments as basis for selecting management consultants.
Academic training: Each are of competence demands minimum level of attainment of academic proficiency.
In highly specialized areas, such as operations research, the consultant should have training in the applied science, the mathematics logic, statistics and economics.
Applied experience: The consultant should have practical experience in comparable situation in related nature. It is preferably but not essential, for these experiences to have been in the same industry.
Personality characteristics: This management consultant should build a sound and workable relationship with people in the client company.
It is important that chemistry enables the consultant to functions as them. His personality should be compatible with theirs in order to establish a proper relationship. Results achieved in previous assignments: The consultant should have a proven track record of his own part from the accomplishment of the parent firm.
Checking his client references and evaluating his past engagements can determine this.
- CONSULTING IN SMALL BUSINESS E.GMACON BREAD INDUSTRY:
Definition of small enterprises: this is lack of agreement throughout the world is to the definition of small-scale business.
The central bank of Nigerian classified small-scale enterprises and those businesses with annual turnover of less than half a million naira.
The small-scale industry development programme defined small-scale industries in Nigeria as “ any manufacturing processing or service industry with machinery and equipment alone. The 1989 industrial policy of Nigeria defined small scale industries as those with a total investment of between N100,000 and N200,000 exclusive of land but including working capital.
Kubr (1977:5) defined small-scale industries as one in which the administrative and operational management are the hands of one of two people, who also make the important decision in that enterprises.
2.10 PROBLEMS OF SMALL-SCALE BUSINESS.
Small-scale industry, eg. Macon bread is faced with problems either general or specific. This calls for the need on the part of management consultants to be aware of the problems at the enterprises level.
Kubr (1977:296) identified some of the problems as follows:
- Lack of good line management and specialist staff large well organized enterprises can usually afford with good line management and specialist staff.
- Inadequate data, small enterprises managers often operate with inadequate or at best with minimum quantitative data.
- Small-scale enterprises normally have limited reserves with low capacity to borrow.
- The hand to month financial existence of the enterprises does not encourage opportunities for staff training and development with consequent loss in realization of the full potential of the human resources within the enterprises.
Lewis (1974:#4-41) listed some of the problems of small scale enterprises as follows:
- SHORTAGE OF BASIC INFRASTRUCTURAL FACILITIES:
Well-established and reliable infrastructure facilities are indispensable for industrial development. Electricity is needed to increase visibility in the work place and to produce machineries. Water required for cleaning, mixing, cooling and for domestic use of labour force.
Telecommunication is needed for quick and continuous contract with suppliers customers sales man and others on which the success the enterprises depends.
- ENTREPRENEURIAL AND MANAGEMENT
There is shortage of entrepreneurship in the country. As used here, the entrepreneur is the country. As used here, the entrepreneurs is the founder of an enterprises, he is the person who perceives the opportunities which exist for a product assembles factors of production and the materials input and arranges for the marketing of the product.
According to Dricker (1984) the manager is a dynamic life-giving element in every business, without his leadership the resources of production remain resources and become production.
PROBLEMS OF STAFF TRAINING:
The importance of training as well the improvement of the performance of employees in order to achieve overall excellent performance is now increasingly realized.
Training is necessary at all levels and if it is to be effective and productive related to the changing needs of the organization. It is a known fact that a man can only teach what he knows and his effectiveness as a teacher in part depends on the teaching facilities at his disposal. This problem is compounded by the quality of trainers themselves.
In consequence, many of the products of the system are at best in adequately trained. As a small-scale industry grows in size introduces new techniques their training must also change.
MARKETING PROBLEMS
Marketing function, involves research, advertising distribution and selling of products. It embraces all activities geared towards sales and consumption f gods. It is observed that small-scale industrialists adopt personal selling as a means of promoting fair product. It can be concluded that one of the causes of the low sales is attributed to lack of effective promotion methods such as advertisement, radio, television, newspaper and son.
Olowo (1983:3) identified the principal problem in small-scale enterprises.
According to him, the non-availability or insufficiency of credit facilities is a major problem small-scale industrialists face in Nigeria.
Finance is the bone of any business be it is a profit maximization company of non-profit organization, it is the availability of finance that determines the life Spam of businesses.
—-This article is not complete———–This article is not complete————
This article was extracted from a Project Research Work Topic:
“THE IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCIES ON SMALL SCALE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.(A CASE STUDY OF MACON BREAD INDUSTRY IN ENUGU STATE).”
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