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14 Jul, 2013

Are consultants worth the money? Sydney Morning Herald

They are the management consultants – influential guns for hire whose services come with a hefty price tag, staffed by the brightest, youngest things top-notch universities can produce.

Since the first, McKinsey & Co, arrived in Australia in 1962, the top companies – McKinsey, Bain & Co and Boston Consulting Group (BCG)- have become ubiquitous, their influence and alumni networks spreading deep into boardrooms, academia and government.

To their critics, they are the faceless men of corporate Australia – influential but inscrutable, unaccountable yet holding in their hands the fate of workers and executives alike. Often, cynics say, they are brought in to endorse a plan the chief executive and board intended all along – a plan that usually involves cutting jobs.

But their defenders – including many of the men and women who once worked for them – say they simply have an intense focus on serving their clients, and on finding solutions to the public and private sectors’ most perplexing problems.

Read the rest: Are consultants worth the money?.