Abstract:
Our underlying proposition is that self-employed management consultants, who meet the
psychological contracts of their clients, are more likely to secure further engagements and
referrals than those who meet only the technical assignment requirements. We develop three
propositions: 1. The importance of the psychological contract in a consulting assignment
depends on the engaging executive’s motivation for engaging the consultant. 2. Skills related to
emotional intelligence can help the consultant to understand and reveal the psychological
motivation and other psychological expectations of the engaging executive. 3. The consultant’s
competencies should be congruent with psychological expectations of the engaging executive’s
psychological contract for a successful consultancy outcome. A conceptual model of the
consulting process that incorporates the key ideas in the paper is presented.
