Suffering of management consultancy?

I am a french student in graduate school of management, at the University of Edinburgh. I am studying the management consultancy, and I have a question for you, if it's possible:

Management consultancy suffers in reputation because clients believe they could or should do the consultancy task themselves?

Have you got, please, some informations about this topic and What is your opinion?

Thank you in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Hi Sandevoir

I have worked in professional services for 14 years - auditing, corporate recovery and management consulting. Of these management consulting was the least professional. The net result has been and continues to be - the promotion of ideas and the creating of capability and experience to win work. The reality often is that the consultants do not believe that the idea will deliver any benefits to the client AND they often do not have any capability in the area in which they claim to be experts.

In conculsion, it is my belief that management consultants have a poor reputation because they consistently fail to deliver tangible business benefits in alignment with the expectations that they create during the sales cycle.