The active client: The boundary-spanning roles of internal consultants as gatekeepers, brokers and partners of their external counterparts
通过研究内部顾问如何管理外部顾问，识别出客户在跨界知识流动中扮演的三种角色：守门人、中间人和合作伙伴，并分析这些角色如何随客户的专业知识、项目职责和个人声誉而变化。
This article examines the active client of management consultancy as a key agent in managing and mediating knowledge flows across organizational boundaries. From a qualitative study of a particular case of active clients—internal consultants managing their external counterparts—three boundary-spanning roles are identified. Active clients can act as a gatekeeper, broker and partner with respect to both consultants and the knowledge they bring. These roles are shown to vary according to a client’s expertise, formal project responsibilities and personal reputation, as well as the different phases of consulting projects. They not only elucidate an otherwise neglected or static dimension of management consultancy—client activity—but highlight the dynamic and essentially political character of serving as knowledge barriers and/or bridges in the intermediation and co-production of management knowledge across organizational boundaries.