Consultants and the Communication of Ambiguity

• In Event: Critical Interventions in Corporate Communications

Abstract

“Consulting” is a nebulous profession. Not only does it encompass a wide range of activities--from branding to strategy, from design to human resources--but it also requires no particular skill set, certification, or knowledge base in order to practice. Despite (or perhaps because of) this elasticity, consultants have had an increasing role within management, broadly conceived. As McKenna (2006) has argued, these “specialists have proven themselves able to master, manipulate, and extend novel realms of complex knowledge,” intervening in and offering solutions to problems that proved intractable to workaday employees (pp. 11, 12).


The productive ambiguity of consulting is animated in the work of “futurist” consultants: those who are tasked to help companies comprehend, navigate, and control the future. The unknowability and risk inherent to the future provides a rich context for consulting the flourish both practically and ideologically. In this session, I will explore how futurist consultants utilize a wide range of communicative practices, media, and structures to exacerbate, reproduce, and exploit uncertainty.


References
McKenna, C. D. (2006). The world's newest profession: Management consulting in the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press.

Author

• Devon Powers, Temple U