Rowing Against The Tide
One of my summer reads in 2023 was The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington. Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is an Italian American Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and is also a founder of UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). She has focused her career on translating economic ideas into policy and has been advising governments on innovation and growth policies. The co-author of the book, Rosie Collington, is a PhD candidate at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
The Big Con delves into the political economy of the large, multinational consultancies and their relationships to governments, businesses, and other organizations. I do not think the book’s intention is to diminish the role of business management consultants but rather to highlight how an excessive reliance on the consulting industry can have long-term detrimental effects on the role of governments.
Mariana and Rosie mention: While consultants can help clients to achieve their objectives, the claims that the consulting industry adds value to the economy and society by brokering knowledge and reducing costs is exaggerated. The book includes multiple real cases and investigations on why the growth in consulting contracts, the business model of big consultancies, the underlying conflicts of interest, and the lack of transparency matter hugely. The book also discusses MBA students' inclination towards consulting and their reluctance towards low-paid government jobs.
Mariana and Rosie point out why the growing use of the consulting industry across the public sector is a political issue. This is because a loss of knowledge can undermine the state’s capacity to govern relationships with the private sector. The capabilities for managing the delivery of a service in-house would often be completely lost after they had been outsourced at scale. The book uses data to demonstrate how popular solutions recommended by consultants, such as “downsizing” or “deskilling”, can seriously damage the learning capacity of organizations.
Chapter 9 on Climate Consulting is concerning -- readers will find how consulting companies are serving both sides of the street. Mariana and Rosie write: In the climate crisis, big consultancies are riding a new governance wave, and in so doing are providing a veil of commitment without the mandate for action. The authors, at the end of the book, do mention that it would be foolish to blame consultancies for all the problems.
The Big Con concludes with four proposals:
1. A new vision, narrative, and mission for the civil service
2. Invest in internal capacity and capability creation
3. Embed learning – and an end-point – into contract evaluations
4. Mandate transparency and conflicting interests disclosure
What readers will not gain from The Big Con is clear advice on how to draw fine boundaries. Perhaps solid regulations in the consulting industry would suffice. The question to ask also is whether we truly want and need a government that rows so it can steer.
