Abstract
Consultancy firms have been around for a long time. Not unjustified, Alakavuklar (2025) noted recently that consultancy firms may even drive illicit activities while being part of an innovative networks of shell companies. Consultants do this by bringing management ideas into client organisations as Sturdy et al. (2014: 185) have outlined.
In this debate, Mazzucato and Collingto’s book on The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments and Warps Our Economies provides an exquisite contribution. After the obligatory introduction, the book’s second chapter discusses a taxonomy of the consulting industry while the third chapter briefly outlines the history of the industry. Chapter four examines the core idea of the book. This is what the authors call “The Outsourcing Turn.” How this outsourcing turn is done is subject of the fifth chapter on, as the authors call it “The Big Confidence Trick.” The next chapter shows how consultancy firms evade the risks associated with consulting while chapter seven illuminates how such outsourcing can quickly lead to what the authors call an “Infantilizing” of organizations.
Since this is less the case in business organization compared to state-run bureaucracies, chapter eight focuses on a “Colliding Interest,” namely that of consultancies versus democracy. Beyond that, the authors end their book by investigating the impact of consultancy on the most relevant issue of the 21st century. Chapter nine is entitled “Climate Consulting: An Existential Threat?” The book ends with a conclusion.
Essentially, the authors argue that consultancy firms operate as purveyors of a Big Con: a deliberate attempt to gain trust through misrepresentation. In short, consultants persuade others to adopt actions or beliefs that are beneficial to consultants and their clients, often at the public’s expense. In doing so, consultancies not only help maximize corporate profits but also reinforce the legitimacy of corporate management and capitalism more broadly.
The consultancy’s con is camouflaged as helping organizations achieve their objectives—a managerial euphemism for profits and shareholder value. Meanwhile, governments and corporations alike have come to rely on consultants.
The result, as the authors describe, is the “hollowing out of government departments” (p. 9)—a loss of internal expertise and increasing dependency on external consultants. Political scientists refer to this as state capture: when corporate interests shape public policy to their benefit.
This is largely the domain of the so-called Big Three strategy firms: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company. They work alongside the Big Four accounting firms: PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY. National-level players, or “boutique consultancies” (p. 25), supplement these giants. Collectively, these firms operate in a global market valued between $700 billion and $900 billion in 2021 (p. 13)—a figure comparable to Switzerland’s GDP.
Public spending on consultancy is eye-watering. In 2021, UK public bodies awarded over $3.34 billion in consultancy contracts (p. 13). Consultants command vast fees with minimal risks. Deloitte, for example, earned $1.3 million per day from the UK government during the pandemic (p. 23). In the US, McKinsey received $12 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs under a “no-bid contract” (p. 22).
Consultancies replicate corporate hierarchies internally, complete with pyramidal structures, CEOs at the top, and MBA-holding analysts at the bottom. The power players are those who attract new contracts for the consultancy firm. Internally, they are known as The Untouchables. Intoxicated by power, this can quickly lead to a toxic workplace for those down the infamous chain of command. Globally, the industry employs roughly 400,000 people—more than Toyota’s entire workforce. Most revenues (96%) come from North America and Europe (p. 30).
Despite the shiny gloss put on by consultancies, problems abound. In 2021, BCG struggled to explain what analytical value it had provided to the Australian government (p. 34). Often, consultants offer little more than superficial frameworks—such as, for example, the infamous BCG Matrix (star, cow, dog, question mark), an oversimplification still revered in some management circles.
Historically, consultants have profited from the neoliberal reforms, they themselves have been pushing. Under Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s spending on consultants rose from £6 million in 1979 to £246 million by 1990 (p. 51). Consultancies actively champion privatization—not so much because of any ideological conviction, but because it lines their pockets.
Collington and Mazzucato also trace consultancies’ involvement in major scandals: from Enron (2001) to the Global Financial Crisis (2008). During the latter, Australia’s Labor government spent AUD$480 million on consultancy services (p. 84). More recently, KPMG was fined £14.4 million for its role in the collapse of Carillion—a sum that represented less than 1% of KPMG’s annual revenue (p. 90).
Much of consultancy is built on the “confidence trick” (p. 93)—the illusion of value creation. The industry thrives on “rhetorical tactics” (p. 96) designed to create impressions of expertise and insight. Behind the scenes, consultants are described as “ruthless, cocky and borderline sociopathic” (p. 103), thriving on crisis and the distress of others.
Information is often shallow or recycled (p. 107), with consultants using anecdotes, templates, and buzzwords to win new contracts. Some consultancies even mimic academia in language and branding. Deloitte, for example, launched a “university” complete with a “holographic concierge” (p. 111). This academic mimicry helps embed the ideology of managerialism into public discourse.
Importantly, consultancy is an unregulated profession. Anyone can call themselves a “consultant” (p. 126). The requirement is not to deliver value, but to create the perception of value. One striking case involves a Swedish hospital that paid BCG £22 million over 6 years—equivalent to £60,000 per month per consultant (p. 133). The result: both the board members and the director resigned. The hospital became one of the most expensive buildings in the world.
Such debacles are soon forgotten. As the authors argue, “forgetfulness” (p. 145) is a key feature of consultancy, allowing the same mistakes—dirty, but profitable, tactics—to be repeated. Meanwhile, consultancies have also gained “unprecedented access to the heart of government” (p. 158). This access allows consultancies to fight any plan of a government to tax corporations. Once paired with the presence of consultancy offices in 43 out of 53 known secrecy jurisdictions (p. 166) highlights the industry’s use of tax havens.
The final chapter addresses global warming. The climate change consulting market is projected to exceed $8.5 billion by 2028 (p. 171). For consultants, climate change represents no more than a new business opportunity. The use of the CSR rhetoric by consultancies masks the deeper problem: consultancies often advise both governments and the polluters they regulate (p. 206) for the benefit of polluters. Where citizens worry about planetary destruction, consultants see lucrative contracts. It is the taxpayers who foot the bill.
In conclusion, Collington and Mazzucato’s The Big Con is a compelling, incisive, and timely critique of the consulting industry. It exposes how consultancies operate, how they infiltrate government and corporate structures, and how they legitimize exploitation and corporate dysfunctions under the guise of expertise. In short, the book is in line with Wright and Nyberg (2024: 10) when emphasizing that consultancy firms focus on “the efficiency of fossil fuel extraction and enhancing corporate profitability.” As such, consultancy firms are more likely to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution (Klikauer and Campbell, 2020).
Beyond global warming, the sheer scale and audacity of the consulting racket are astonishing. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in capitalism’s inner workings and the hidden, cunning, ruthless, and dirty consultancy-hands that all too often shape public policy.
