Management Decision

Management consultancy: a modern folly?

Jak de Burgundy

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To cite this document:
Jak de Burgundy, (1998),"Management consultancy: a modern folly?", Management Decision, Vol. 36 Iss 3 pp. 204 - 205
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Andrew P. Kakabadse, (1986),"Consultants and the Consultancy Process", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 1 Iss 2
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Jan A. De Jong, Ilse M. Van Eekelen, (1999),"Management consultants: what do they do?", Leadership & Organization
Development Journal, Vol. 20 Iss 4 pp. 181-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01437739910276984
Roy McLarty, Terry Robinson, (1998),"The practice of consultancy and a professional development strategy", Leadership
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Management consultancy: a modern folly?

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Jak de Burgundy
NFN Management Consultancy, Norwich, UK

Reflecting on the growth of

state spending on management consultancy this brief
article argues that much of
this spending has been wasteful or misdirected. Observing
that in Britain much of the
states spending on consultancy has taken place during
periods of recession the
article argues that spending
on consultancy may be
likened to spending on public
works, or the follies commissioned by private benefactors, which traditionally have
been designed to maintain
levels of economic activity
and employment.

Management Decision
36/3 [1998] 204205
MCB University Press
[ISSN 0025-1747]

[ 204 ]

Introduction
Recently on a business trip to Scotland I managed to engineer for myself a trip to Oban.
Situated on the west coast of Scotland close to
the mountains of the Western Highlands,
Oban is a beautiful place. In fact this was a
return visit for me. A physical and spiritual
return to that special place many of us have; a
return to the place of childhood holidays.
Having little time to spare on the trip I was
anxious to cram in, and recapture, at least
some of the activities and spirit of these childhood holidays, and so, as soon as I arrived in
Oban I turned my back on the shore and
turned to climb the hill to McCaigs Folly.
McCaigs Folly is, I suppose, a mini version
of The Colosseum. Both are incomplete,
although unlike The Colosseum, which in its
disrepair reminds us of its centuries of
history and heritage, McCaigs Folly never
stood whole and proud because the craftsmen
who worked on it were never allowed to
complete their task.
I can remember now my father explaining
to me the painful story of this folly and its
construction. Indeed years later when I first
began to study Political Economy I realised
that I had been introduced to the ideas of
Keynes and his multiplier as an eight year
old during a family outing to the folly.
Long before the 1980s and British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatchers famous dictum
that there was no such thing as society,
McCaig had been concerned with the welfare
and prosperity of the people of Oban. During
a deep depression he decided that he should,
in order to safeguard the health and skills of
his townsfolk, commission a large project
which, while it would perform no directly
practical function, might keep the men of the
town gainfully employed until the depression
had passed. Unfortunately the full project
proved to be more expensive than anyone had
imagined and ultimately, McCaigs project; to
build a mini-version of the Colosseum, was
abandoned for lack of funds.
As I travelled south the following day
through some of Scotlands once great
industrial heartland, I felt sad that during the
economic restructuring and recession which
ravaged Scotland throughout the 1980s and

1990s, no attempt had been made to safeguard

the skills of a generation or the living
standards of large sections of the population.
Why had no one had the vision, the compassion or the political will to institute a programme of public works? Why had no one
thought to commission a folly or two? And
then it struck me; they had.
As I gazed on the crumpled remains of the
Ravenscraig steelworks and the huge blue
tower which had been a beacon visible for
many miles around the town of Motherwell I
came to realise that, throughout the 1980s and
1990s our governments have been engaged in
a most elitist form of government sponsored
folly construction. Management consultancy I realised, and as the following will
argue, is a Modern Folly.

A folly for (and of) our times

The term folly has a number of connotations, and so, might be used in a number of
ways. Huczynski (1993) for example might be
inclined to argue that management consultancy and the thinking which underpins it, is
folly since it can be demonstrated to be
flawed in its thinking and approach (de Burgundy, 1995, 1996; Collins, 1996). In this short
article however, I would like to argue that we
may think of government spending on
management consultancy as a modern folly; a
project which performs no real practical role
beyond keeping certain groups of men and
women employed.
Let us be clear what we are talking about
here. We are not talking about public works
in any traditional sense. We are not talking
about the type of project which takes honest,
decent yet unemployed men and women and
attempts to make use of their skills for the
greater public good (even where the work
serves no purpose beyond building a monument). Most Western-world administrations
of the 1980s and 1990s have been very much
against this kind of Keynesian demand
management. Programmes of public works,
they tell us, are inflationary and inflation is a
great social evil.
Of course this rejection of demand management economics in favour of supply-side

Jak de Burgundy
Management consultancy:
a modern folly?

Downloaded by UPPSALA UNIVERSITY At 09:40 27 March 2015 (PT)

Management Decision
36/3 [1998] 204205

economics does not mean that governments

have ceased to spend money. Managing the
economy is an expensive business and in
pursuing the policies of supply-side economics and deregulation the British government,
in common with many other supply-side
administrations, spent heavily, and I would
argue, none too prudently. Indeed I believe
that unlike the hospitals and dams built by
previous administrations, or the monuments
commissioned by private benefactors, this
spending by and on behalf of governments
has added little, if anything to the commonwealth and should be regarded as anti-social,
and in any sense of the term, the height of
folly. Spending on management consultancy
is, I believe, a case in point.

Example
The Times of London (18 September 1995), has
observed that since 1979 the British government have spent 320 million on market
testing (preparation of government services
for tender) alone.
In 1995 the British government spent 865
million on consultants. 7 million was spent
just to sell the dockyards at Rosyth and
Devonport.
These are huge sums of money, yet, the
British House of Commons Public Accounts
Committee has suggested that these official
figures may under-estimate the true level of
state expenditure on consultancy services.
Indeed, given that several government
departments had refused to disclose their
expenditure on consultancy, the Public
Accounts Committee may well be correct
when it suggests that these official figures are
but the tip of the iceberg.
Clearly then, the governments consultancy
expenditure has been huge. But when does
such spending take on the status of folly? The

short answer is that management consultancy may be considered a modern folly

since, like McCaigs folly, it performs no
useful function beyond keeping significant
numbers of men and women employed. For
example The Times has observed that in spite
of the 7 million spent on advising the
privatisation of the dockyards of Rosyth and
Devonport, only two companies expressed an
interest in purchasing the yards; the same
companies who were already running the
yards! In addition the Cabinet Offices
Efficiency Unit has complained that the
evaluation and monitoring of consultants and
consultancy projects has been inadequate
and has complained that vast sums have been
spent to no good effect.
There is good reason to believe therefore,
that state-sponsored consultancy expenditure
in Britain and elsewhere represents a folly
for our time. There is one final and wicked
twist, however. Unlike the follies of old which
were paid for by the wealthy so that ordinary
folk might be occupied, the modern folly of
institutionalised management consultancy is
a folly financed by the ordinary tax-payer for
the benefit of a wealthy elite.

References
Collins, D. (1996), No such thing asa practical
approach to management, Management
Decision, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 66-71.
De Burgundy, J. (1995), Working daze: uncertainty and ambiguity in consulting, Management Decision, Vol. 33 No. 8, pp. 51-5.
De Burgundy, J. (1996), Shoot the messenger:
crazy management fads and faddish management crazies, Empowerment in Organizations, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 28-35.
Huczynski, A.A. (1993), Management Gurus: What
Makes Them and How to Become One, Routledge, London.
The Times, 18 September 1995.

Application questions
1 Is the author too hard on consultants and
the people who hire them? Are the examples described typical or atypical?

2 Think of one positive and one negative

experience of an involvement with an
external advisor or management consultant. What were some of the contributing
factors?

[ 205 ]

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