On virtual management consulting projects

For the GW Business Management Degree programme, part-time students are required to produce a Management Consulting report (in 1,500 words) derived from a dissertation project (in 5,000 words). As most of these part-time students are not actually employed by specific clients as Management Consultants, their Management Consulting projects are very often not genuine consulting projects. They are, instead, virtual management consulting projects: there is no actual consulting contract between the student (as a consultant) and the client system; indeed, there is no actual request from the client in the client system to the student to provide consulting service in this case. There is no consulting fee paid for the virtual consulting project done by the student. Nevertheless, like a real management consulting project, there is a specific client system with clearly identified client's concern/ problems to be addressed by the consultant, and this consulting context needs to be explained in the virtual consulting report. The student still needs to apply concepts and techniques from the Management Consulting literature in his/ her virtual management consulting project.

Apparently, not all techniques from the Management Consulting literature can be applied in a virtual management consulting project. For example, there is no need to make a price quotation of consulting service to a client. There is also no need to learn how to gain consulting business from a potential client.

To produce a good quality management consulting report, students still need to study the subject of Management Consulting well.