Managers spend considerable amounts of corporate money to hire consultants. The research proposes two potential benefits of consultants' advice: increasing decision accuracy and sharing responsibility with the advisor. In contrast to previous research, which has predominantly focused on factors influencing decisional accuracy, this paper evaluates the sharing of responsibility in the form of using an advisor as a scapegoat. We conduct an online experiment with 175 managers from German-speaking countries in an investment setting. We find that the presence of a potential scapegoat positively affects advice utilization in an economic boom but negatively affects such utilization in an economic crisis due to managers' varying risk perceptions. Managers' risk perceptions are the main drivers of scapegoating as a form of managerial blame avoiding decision-making. We contribute to management research and highlight managers’ opportunistic motives behind consulting (costly) advice.

管理人员花费大量公司资金聘请顾问。该研究提出了顾问建议的两个潜在好处：提高决策准确性和与顾问分担责任。与之前主要关注影响决策准确性的因素的研究相比，本文以使用顾问作为替罪羊的形式评估了责任分担。我们在投资环境中对来自德语国家的 175 名经理进行了在线实验。我们发现，潜在替罪羊的存在对经济繁荣中的建议使用产生积极影响，但由于管理者的不同风险认知，对经济危机中的这种使用产生负面影响。经理人 风险认知是作为逃避决策的管理责任的一种形式的替罪羊的主要驱动因素。我们为管理研究做出贡献，并强调管理者在咨询（昂贵）建议背后的机会主义动机。