Management Consultants Can Save the World

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2013/01/management_consulting_how_middle_managers_make_countries_and_businesses.html

by bane • 13 years ago

12 6 13 years ago

slate.com

atdrummond• 13 years ago

"In partnership with the consulting firm Accenture, the researchers randomly assigned a management makeover to a handful of Indian textile firms, while at the same time following a set of control textile factories to benchmark the effects of good management."

It certainly doesn't seem as though there was a potential for this report to have been biased.

A more interesting report would have been for those consultants to have been compared not only against a control but also firms where executives had been taught basic management and business practices themselves. They very likely could have made similar productivity gains and perhaps without spending the normally ludicrous management consulting fees.

Of course I might be wrong - the consultants did such a great job running Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign.

dangero• 13 years ago

I don't think that would work although I'm only speculating as well. I think the reason that external consultants can work better is that they exist in a different political situation than most internal managers do. A lot of basic management skills are human nature or basic survival techniques such as being efficient, and even untrained managers probably have those, but internal managers just don't have the political situation where they feel they can propose changes and keep their job secure.

mtrimpe• 13 years ago

Indeed; this sounds like a perfect example of the Hawthorne effect [1] at work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect If they had compe

mseebach• 13 years ago

The headline is misleading, it should be "Better Management Can Save the World". If a company want to improve it's management practices, perhaps hiring a consultancy isn't the worst idea, but it's the motivation (improving management), not the tool (management consultants) that is important.

kumarski• 13 years ago

You misspelled Entrepreneurs.

stupandaus• 13 years ago

They conveniently missed the fact that the consulting provided was operational consulting and not management (read: strategy) consulting.

Management Consultants Can Save the World

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