CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Management consulting according to the management consultancy Wikipedia is the practice of helping organizations to improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement

Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons  including gaining external and presumably objective/advice and access to the consultants specialized expertise.

The consultants aside from their professional expertise are exposed to many organizations and as a result of this exposure they are aware of industry “best practices”, although the transferability of such practice from one organization to another may be limited by specific nature of situations under consideration.

Management consulting started as long as man, Jornem (1983), that among early practioners of the profession, legends in management such as Tailor, Emerson, Gilberth and Ganth, management consulting received a fill up at their era through the works of luminaries such as Mckenzie and Roethizberger and Elton Mayo of the famous Hawthone studies in the 1940. Since this time to the present day, management consulting  has remained a consistently growing industry.

Today the relative modern professionals such as engineers, managers, instrument analysts etc, organizes  themselves in single units called management consultant firms.

Judging by the rate of growth of management consulting (1983) reported a possibility of more than 100,000 consulting in America today.

In Nigeria today , though the exact figure relating to consulting is management consulting firms around. 100 apart from these firms, there are about 1000 individuals offering consultancy service in their own personal capacity. This can be seen in seminars organized by management professional and guidance and counseling provided by expert of different profletions.

Management consulting has long been recognized as a useful professional service that helps managers analyze and solve practical problems faced by their organizations and to earn from the experience of other management and those managers continue influence the establishment of management consulting in their organizations. Also where this not viable, they advice the board of directons on the need to make use of external consultancy services or manages themselves at homes, they act as consultants by providing advice to pears and subordinates.

Consultancies may also provide organizational change management assistance, development of coaching skills, process analysis, technology implementation, strategy development or operational improvement services. Management consultants often bring works to guide the  identification of problems, and to serve as the basis for recommendations for more effective or efficient ways of performing work tasks.

The purpose of this research is to look at the impact of management consultancies on the business sector in this research, emphasis will be on small scale business. This is justifiable not only because small enterprises provide a logical starting point for big business but and training ground for big businesses.

Small-scale business are vital parts of the economic and social life of any community. It is difficult to define exactly what a small-scale business is. The small industry development Agency (SIDA) defines a small-scale process or services industry with a capital investment not exceeding N150,000.000 in machinery and equipment alone. The united states small business administration (SBA) define small industry as one whose average number of employees ranges from 250 to 1500 people. In another definition contained in the SBA, a small-scale business is one dominant in it’s field, they all share a common idea of the criteria which includes the number of employees, the sales volume, the sales volume, type of industry independent owner ship and comparison with it’s past standard.