Consulting During the Coronavirus - in the Light of an Empirical Survey

Abstract

Relatively little and accurate information about management consulting and its market is available to interested readers. Therefore, in this article, we are committed to presenting the most important global trends from various sources, analyzing the main features of the development of the European, Central and Eastern European, as well as the Hungarian consulting markets. The consulting sector – among several other industries, has been affected negatively by the emergence of Corona crisis. Consulting, characterized by stable growth and expansion before the pandemic, is estimated to have declined by 17-18 percent in 2020. However, different experts agree that consulting industry will recover faster from the current crisis than before. The pandemic has caused radical changes in the way we work and communicate, and consultants are ready to keep with the flow. One of the key questions of our empirical study in Hungary was the extent to which each consulting organization experienced an economically negative situation, the areas where there was a decrease or an increase, and the extent to which they see new opportunities for the future. Based on the results obtained, we found that the examined organizations were negatively affected by the crisis in terms of sales and services, but a significant part of the organizations also see new opportunities in the current situation for the future.