The Urwick Award and Cup

The Urwick Prize commemorates the life and work of the distinguished management consultant, writer and educator Colonel Lyndall Fownes Urwick, the founder of Urwick Orr Management Consultants, and is awarded by the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants.  The background to and recent history of the award are set out below.

Background and history of the Urwick Award

Lt. Col. Lyndall Urwick was one of the British pioneers of scientific management prior to the Second World War. In 1934 he set up a management consultancy practice, Urwick, Orr & Partners and in 1969 a foundation was originated in his name for the purposes of furthering management education.

In 1999 the late Hedley Thomas OBE, a Past President of The Institute of Management Consultants, Honorary Assistant of the Company of Management Consultants and a Trustee of the Urwick Foundation proposed that the Foundation should endow the Company with the Lyndall Urwick Memorial Cup together with the Trust's residual funds.

The Cup was donated in October 1999 by Sir Alan Urwick, an Honorary Member of the Company and son of Lyndall Urwick. The Cup was designed and made by Shannon O'Neill, a former Silversmith of the Year of the Goldsmiths' Company.

The Prize is awarded for an outstanding piece of research or thought leadership, published in the previous two years, relevant to management consultancy. It is judged as part of the process of judging the CMCE Research Awards which are awarded by the Centre for Management Consulting Excellence (CMCE). CMCE was established by the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants as an open and collaborative professional community for sharing leading and emerging practices in management consulting. For more about CMCE, please follow this link.

CMCE invites academics and others active in management consultancy to identify research that might be eligible for the CMCE Research Awards. An Assessment Panel of Company members selects a shortlist of papers worthy of Awards and the authors of these papers are invited to write a short submission explaining how their research meets the criteria for the Awards. The Assessment Panel selects the Research Award winners, and the best paper overall receives the Urwick Prize. 

Winners of the Urwick Prize receive a certificate acknowledging the award; there is no cash value to the prize. The winner is also invited to present the Urwick Lecture, scheduled on a mutually convenient date. 

Recent winners of the Urwick Award have been:

  • 2026  Professor Alan Blackman, Griffith Business School for his paper: Be Guided by Your Moral Compass
  • 2024  Dr Konstantin Hopf, University of Bamberg, Professor Oliver Müller, Paderborn University, Professor Arisa Shollo, Copenhagen Business School and Dr Tiemo Thiess, PFA Pension for their paper: Organizational Implementation of AI: Craft and Mechanical Work
  • 2022  Professor Andrew Sturdy, University of Bristol for his paper: The Governance of Management Consultancy Use: Practices, Problems, and Possibilities
  • 2021  Professor Joe O'Mahoney, University of Cardiff and Ioanna Mavridopoulou, University of Cardiff for their paper: Elitism in strategy consulting: How institutional prestige influences recruitment.
  • 2020  Accenture UK for their assignment COVID-19: Coordinating production of medical ventilators for the UK.
  • 2019  Dr Karl Warner, Edinburgh Napier University and Maximilian Wager, The Nunatak Group, Munich for their paper: Building dynamic capabilities for digital transformation: An ongoing process of strategic renewal
  • 2018  Professor Gerry McGivern, Warwick Business School, Professor Sue Dopson Saïd Business School and Professor Ewan Ferlie, King’s Business School for their paper: The Silent Politics of Temporal Work: A Case Study of a Management Consultancy Project to Redesign Public Health Care
  • 2017  Professor William Harvey, Exeter Business School, Professor Timothy Morris, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and Dr Milena Mueller Santos, Kellogg College, University of Oxford, for their paper: Reputation and identity conflict in management consulting
  • 2016  Professor Andrew Sturdy, University of Bristol, Professor Christopher Wright, University of Sydney, and Dr Nick Wylie of Oxford Brookes University for their book: Management as Consultancy: Neo-bureaucracy and the Consultant Manager