Management consultancy: The inside story

Management consultancy: The inside story

Book Reviews Management Consultancy: The Inside Story, CLIVE RASSAM and DAVID OATES, Mercury (1991), 215 pp., A25.00. Management consultancy has becom...

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Book Reviews Management Consultancy: The Inside Story, CLIVE RASSAM and DAVID OATES, Mercury (1991), 215 pp., A25.00. Management consultancy has become a boom industry worldwide. The authors invited leading management consultancies to explain the work they do and the influence they have in company boardrooms. The first part of the book examined a number of questions such as where consultancy comes from, where it is going and how consultancy assignments work out in practice. The second part profiles nine leading consultancies, (Andersen Consulting, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Bossard Consultants, Coopers 81 Lybrand Deloitte, Hay Management Consultants, Arthur D. Little, PA Consulting Group, P-E International, and Price Waterhouse), with seven of the profiles amplified with a case study recommended reading for all consultants and, even more, for those who employ them.

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Britain in 2010, JIM NORTHCO~T and PSI RESEARCH TEAM, Policy Studies Institute (1991), 364 pp., 629.95 hard, E16.50 paper. The general finding was that in the course of the next two decades there will be many changes, but they will mostly be incremental and evolutionary, not discontinuous and dramatic. Hence Britain in 2010 will not be unrecognizably different from Britain today. Not surprisingly, many of the greatest uncertainties are in areas where the key factors are government decisions. The implications of three hypothetical scenarios, (market orientated, interventionist and environment-orientated) were investigated. The model suggested that the latter would produce considerable structural shifts but that would not be at the expense of overall economic growth. A thorough approach but a ‘wild card’ chapter might have been valuable. Also by 2010 significant demographic changes could have begun to show themselves; and it was surprising to find that journals such as Futures were not mentioned in the 406 references.