The image of management consultants has taken a pounding in recent years, giving the industry a reputation for unscrupulousness on par with investment bankers. And recent difficulties and controversies at the three most prestigious firms - McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group , known collectively as MBB - haven’t exactly helped the perception that they serve mostly to bamboozle CEOs while collecting fat fees.
On this week’s episode, hosts Mike Bird, Alice Fulwood and Soumaya Keynes are joined by our global business correspondent Thomas Lee Devlin to find out more about the, and the problems that bedevilling the industrry. They also speak with New York Times journalists Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich about their newly-published book, “When McKinsey Comes to Town”, looking at failures at the most prestigious consultancy, McKinsey - failures that McKinsey says misrepresent its business.
The regulators are bought and paid for - revolving door jobs. They'll get away with it.
McKinsey invented Enron. They'll doanything fora buck.
Birdyword alicefulwood soumaya_keynes Consulting Industry is that criminal as Rating Industrie.
After what happened to KPMG in the UAE? Department of dirty works active at the BIG4 churning out pro-business audit reports supportive of crony capitalism in the Middle East? Shameful Wirecard scandal in Germany?
Problems are best solved by those with skin in the game. Consultants are the antithesis. And to that extent limit room for creative destruction and read to capital misallocation.
PekingMike waltbogdanich Ripping off your clients. Tut tut. Taste of their own medicine? Hence your faux outrage?
Who cares about reputational damage? Worry about the number of lives and families they have ruined to help incompetent CEOs look good. The poster children for what happens when bean counting without social cost is allowed to run amok.
I should be running the Economist.
Look at the mess today since there is a consultant on every corner of the planet. Climate will change but $1b to $30b is no clean feat. Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish has earned his keep but died a horrible death.
Oh, that's amazing. I can't believe it went up 30 times.
I wonder if the companies that these consultants have 'helped' have done better than the ones that have not used these companies.
Profits drive businesses, but should it drive governments and people, if the profits aren't shared by all?! Economic inequality translates into social turbulence and instability of governments and conflicts!
They take the money. You take the consequences