Managing Risk in Consulting Projects Requires a Knowledge-Based Approach

Consultants are spending more time today concerned about operational risk management than ever before. Consultants that manage operational risk and use it as an important driving force for business success find their clients to be more competitive and on the cutting edge. Operational risk management has been developed to offset problems before they occur and to adjust or ship resources accordingly in the event of a threat. Operational risk management is an operational approach to represent knowledge management, and seeks to apply organizational knowledge in order to effectively manage the risks associated with running a successful consulting project for a client (Keskin 2005). Similar to customer relationship management, knowledge management is an enabler for identifying and satisfying customer’s needs and manifests itself as a significant driver that motivates the development of relationships with customers (Hu et al. 1997). Scholars have proven that consultants can use knowledge management to improve customer satisfaction through acquiring additional knowledge from customers, developing better relationships with them, and providing a higher quality of consulting services for them (North, Reinhardt & Schmidt, 2004; Sukumaran et al. 2009).