Management consultants don’t have the most stellar reputation for offering value for money – although, truth be told, the infamy of investment bankers has long since left them in the shade – so I was impressed when, early this year, rumours reached me of a fascinating new study in which a consulting firm was implicitly agreeing to subject its advice to a randomised trial.
Not to put too fine a point on it, that’s a ballsy decision. Almost the only people who ever agree to test their stuff in a randomised trial are the pharmaceutical companies, and I am fairly sure they’re underwhelmed by the experience.
Perhaps Accenture (for it was they) didn’t realise what they were letting themselves in for. After all, the study – conducted by a team of economists at the World Bank, Berkeley and Stanford – was ostensibly about whether modern management techniques would improve the productivity of large textile firms in India. (A draft, “Does Management Matter? Evidence from India”, is available from the website of co-author Nick Bloom at Stanford.) But how do you improve management techniques? You send a management consulting firm in.