

Management Consultants Can Save the World - bane
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2013/01/management_consulting_how_middle_managers_make_countries_and_businesses.html

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atdrummond
"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.

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dangero
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.

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mseebach
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.

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

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kumarski
You misspelled Entrepreneurs.

