Abstract
This paper examines how the emergence of generative and agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping Professional Services Organisations (PSOs), with a particular focus on management consulting. Grounded in established theory on knowledge-intensive firms (Starbuck, 1992; von Nordenflycht, 2010) and the sociology of professions (Abbott, 1988; Susskind and Susskind, 2015), the paper revisits earlier “new economy” consulting literature and identifies five persistent gaps. Drawing on recent practitioner and academic sources, including landmark field-experimental evidence on AI and consultant performance (Dell’Acqua et al., 2023), the paper maps how contemporary work on AI-enabled consulting and PSA begins to address these deficiencies. The paper synthesises empirical evidence on AI’s performance implications, theorises the changing nature of consulting under generative AI including automation of core analytical tasks, productisation of services, heightened client expectations, and the emergence of AI risk and governance as advisory domains and analyses threats to apprenticeship models and professional development pipelines.