Friday, 1 February 2019

The Impact of Management Consultants on Public Service Efficiency

an article by Ian Kirkpatrick (Warwick Business School, UK), Andrew J Sturdy and Gianluca Veronesi (University of Bristol) and Nuria Reguera Alvarado and Antonio Blanco-Oliver (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain) published in Policy & Politics Volume 47 Number 1 (January 2019)

Abstract

Public sector organisations often make use of management consultants in policy implementation, but we know little about the outcomes.

The paper reports one of the first quantitative evaluations of the impact of consulting advice on efficiency of public sector organisations.

We employ an extensive dataset covering English NHS acute care hospital trusts over a four-year period. Based on PCSEs estimations, the findings show a significantly positive relationship between consulting expenditure and organisational inefficiency.

These results lend support to critical accounts of management consulting, highlighting the need for organisations to be circumspect in deciding whether and how to use these services.


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