Penguin Press
The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies
Key Metrics
- Mariana Mazzucato
- Penguin Press
- Hardcover
- 9780593492673
- 9 X 6 X 0.91 inches
- 1.31 pounds
- Business & Economics > Consulting
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Our governments are meant to be transparently run in the interest of voters, just as our businesses and corporations are meant to be productive, creating value for society. But today this is simply not the case. There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and business and government. This must change. Our reliance on companies such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates accountability, and hastens climate breakdown.
The results of these relationships have been at best questionable and at worst scandalous, as consultants have routinely recommended off-shoring or restructuring at the expense of workers, pocketing eye-watering earnings for themselves along the way. Consequently, our governments have become less capable and unresponsive to popular will--at a crucial moment when climate change, global pandemic, and social unrest increasingly threaten our ways of life. And, to make matters worse, our best and brightest graduates are often redirected away from public service into consulting. We have been conned--and by an industry we barely understand.
In The Big Con, Mazzucato and Collington throw the curtain back on the consulting industry. They dive deep into important case studies of consultants taking the reins with disastrous results, such as the debacle of the roll out of HealthCare.gov and the tragic failures of governments to respond adequately to the covid pandemic. The result is an important and exhilarating intellectual journey into the modern economy's beating heart. With peerless scholarship, and a wealth of original research, Mazzucato and Collington argue brilliantly for building a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good.
Videos
No Videos
Community reviews
Write a ReviewNo Community reviews