Consultant competence trust doesn't pay off, but benevolent trust does! Managing knowledge with care

Purpose - Consultants are hired for their domain expertise. For long-term engagements, the role of their expertise diminishes as the need to develop personal trust gains significance for a successful project outcome. The purpose of this paper is to examine trust and knowledge management in the context of project teams, exploring the trusting relationship between external consultants and internal clients.Design methodology approach - Two questionnaire surveys were developed, and a field survey of consultant-functional specialist dyads yielded 80 matching-pair responses. A regression analysis approach was used to test the hypotheses.Findings - In enterprise systems implementation projects, consultants are typically hired for their expertise in the domain - i.e. competence trust. Counter to conventional wisdom, benevolent trust influenced the success of an effective transfer of implementation knowledge.Research limitations implications - The limitations of the study include the inability to capture temporal aspects of knowledge transfer activities (survey questionnaires), generalizability to consulting-related projects only, and application to a context-sensitive set of knowledge, i.e. implementation knowledge.Practical implications - Client organizations must no longer focus entirely on competence trust when selecting consultants; instead, they should place a greater emphasis on benevolence trust, which is critical to project success, especially in a long-term project engagement. Consulting firms must ensure that their employees exhibit "emotional" characteristics through hiring practices and or training.Originality value - The implications of the findings reported in the study are discussed for scholars and managers engaged in IT-based solution delivery utilizing external consultants.