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hannaxg's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
A really informative read, easy to understand and to follow as a business student who had little knowledge of public policy. While I was aware of some of the realities of the consulting industry (conflicts of interest, scandals, etc), I hadn’t fully grasped the massive influence of it on governments and businesses. This book was therefore insightful in providing explanations, details and criticisms on past and current agreements with consulting companies, but especially in highlighting how such agreements and partnerships permeate all aspects of an entity’s decision making processes. Reading about how their so-called value creation proposals and services have gradually emptied out both businesses’ and governments’ in-house capabilities was sometimes nauseating. The silver lining is the last chapter, which puts forward four proposals for governments to reduce their dependence on consulting services. I would have liked this section to be a bit more detailed and wide-ranging, in fact there is no piece of advice given for businesses, which — as the authors explained thoroughly — have quite a big role to play in choosing to hire consultants.
soofsaphony's review against another edition
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
4.0
This was a very tough book to read through, in part because it addresses yet another big structural issue for our modern democracies that I as an individual can do quite little about, and in part because the authors use quite advanced language related to how governments, policy, public procurement, and businesses work. However, what they address is absolutely important to raise more awareness about, and I hope more people will read it so we can start doing something about this together.