Consultants as legitimizers: exploring their rhetoric

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how legitimizers invest in their approach to meet the suspicion of being a one‐sided advocate.Design/methodology/approach – A multiple case study of four public sector decisions, based on a comparative argumentation analysis of two consulting reports in each case, one written by a legitimizer and one by a devil's advocate. The findings of the document analysis are triangulated with author interviews.Findings – Consultants acting as legitimizers are often suspected of being political allies of a decision maker. To neutralize their reputation as hired guns, these consultants invest in being seen as impartial by making their research approaches transparent and their argumentation balanced to increase their credibility in the eyes of stakeholders, which is necessary to execute their central task: legitimizing a major decision.Research limitations/implications – The number of four cases could limit the possible variation within the legitimizer role. Further res...

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