Bridging Uncertainty in Management Consulting: The Mechanisms of Trust and Networked Reputation
分析管理咨询市场的不确定性特征，提出竞争主要依赖基于经验的信任和网络化声誉机制，而非价格或可衡量质量，并重新解释德国咨询市场数据以说明这些机制的作用。
This article analyzes the market of management consulting and identifies institutional and transactional uncertainty as its principal features. Based on these uncertainties, we argue that competition in this market takes place on entirely different grounds than in other business sectors. We suggest that the main drivers of competitiveness are neither price nor measurable quality, but rather experience-based trust and a mechanism we label ‘networked reputation.’ An embeddedness perspective is employed to develop the concept of networked reputation as an intermediate mechanism that complements the duality of system versus personal trust and accounts for firm growth. We reinterpret secondary data on the German consulting market, illustrate the significance of these mechanisms, and demonstrate how management consulting is situated in structures of social relations.