5 ms·

Is it really just McKinsey, or are these articles focused on McKinsey because they are the most schadenfreude-inducing among big management consulting firms (ak

Is it really just McKinsey, or are these articles focused on McKinsey because they are the most schadenfreude-inducing among big management consulting firms (akin to the media outrage directed at Facebook)? e.g. are BCG, Bain, the consulting arms of the Big 4 any more ethical in what they will or won't do for a paying client? The story would be more interesting if everyone outside of McKinsey refused to do consulting work for Purdue, but that is something we'll probably never know.

spamizbad 8y ago
we’ll considering the tremendous damage the opioid crisis has wrought I think it’s fair to say it’s not a triviality.
Spooky23 8y ago
McKinsey invented the category in many ways and is the gold standard to some. It’s like how anything Apple is a thing.
- pklee 8y ago
  A book called "Lords of Strategy" tracks the consulting "apple" thing. It is a good read. Sorry for duplications. I think overall management consulting is a world ready to be distrupted (if not already). Regurgitation sold as overpriced thoughtware
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It’s really dilution of blame. Actually doing anything in a corporation is hard, paying McKinsey to do what they do makes it easier, therefore there is value.
  - softwaredoug 8y ago
    It’s tough (speaking as a consultant at a smaller company). Large company procurement/legal basically limits the viable pool of competing consulting firms to those with sunk capital in their own big legal/procurement. And the big 4 management consulting firms have all perfected getting that large company’s client relationship and landing contract after contract. It’s the same reason the same big 4-5 federal contractors win most of the work. The sunk cost in needed bureaucracy is large, it’s hard for a small player to compete. The root issue is big co procurement has taken accountability away from the people who actually use and understand the services. So in my company’s case it’s common to start a relationship with a counterpart at a firm very willing to invest in our services. Sadly the procurement bureaucracy really gets in the way of progress making everything more expensive for both sides. If you’re Accenture and McKinsey you just (unethically in my opinion) sink the cost but then milk the relationship for all it’s worth.
bogomipz 8y ago
>"... are BCG, Bain, the consulting arms of the Big 4 any more ethical in what they will or won't do for a paying client? Your comment is little more than "whataboutism." The post is commentary on the nytimes story about how the Massachusetts Attorney General suing McKinsey and specific instances of McKinsey targeting a doctor's practice in their state. So yes there is good reason to single out McKinsey here as they are the defendant in a lawsuit. >"are these articles focused on McKinsey because they are the most schadenfreude-inducing among big management consulting firms (akin to the media outrage directed at Facebook)?" This is just an ad-hominem. Informing the public and reporting on issues affecting their society and community is exactly the role of journalism.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
  I have noticed that most accusations of whataboutism are somewhat misplaced. It is not whataboutism to question why a certain company gets the brunt of journalistic targeting while similar other companies do not. If you disagree on the material claims, sure, feel free to point out your reasons, but accusing of whataboutism with just a vague defence of 'journalism', when it's clear that the field is rife with partial truths and outright deception, hardly puts your argument in good light.
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    My comment is very clearly in response to the OP's questioning: >"are BCG, Bain, the consulting arms of the Big 4 any more ethical in what they will or won't do for a paying client?" This is literally asking "what about the other big 4 consulting companies?" There is nothing "misplaced" about my usage of the term here. The article is about a lawsuit in which a specific company - Mckinsey is named as a defendant which I also stated. So clearly I have actually provided a reason for my assertion. Lastly disproportionality of media coverage - of which the OP's does not provide any evidence of, does not make the lawsuit any less credible.
    - zaroth 8y ago
      I think you’ve totally missed the definition of “whataboutism”. When questioning the ethics of a specific firm in an industry, it’s relevant if they are behaving exactly the same as everyone else in the same industry. “Perdue chickens are kept in cages!” is flimsy journalism if every large scale chicken farm also keeps their chicken in cages, and the article fails to explain why Perdue is being singled out. Reporting on air pollution by cars and how it’s changed over the years, and responding that coal power also pollutes, is whataboutism because there’s no expectation of why the pollution level of one would be relevant to the other. Singling out BMW and talking about how much pollution those specific cars produce because they are more likely to be driven by white collar workers, without explaining if those cars are actually producing more pollution per mile, it would not be “whataboutism” to question - what about the pollution from other brands? Is BMW actually worse or do the people who drive them just make a juicy target?
will_brown 8y ago
Yes it is news worthy for the same reasons facebooks role in the election was news worthy, the same reason Goldman Sachs behavior was news worthy in the 2008 great recession. People hold these companies and their employees in such high esteem (to the point some people don’t thing articles should be published about their bad behavior, rather articles should be published about other firms hypothetically engaging in the same behavior if the companies in question didn’t). At the end of the day the worlds biggest companies are willing to knowingly take money from foreign governments to illegally spread propaganda to influence elections, help firms sell drugs that literally end up killing people, and sell their own investment clients toxic assets while offloading their own position on the same assets. You are right others may have engaged in the same behavior, but: 1. That’s not news worthy and 2. other firms likely would have actually suffered real consequences. Certain firms like Facebook and others continually receive bad press because they continually engage in bad behavior but keep on like it’s business as usual. In other words, the article is focused on McKinsey not because there is a grand conspiracy against McKinsey, but because McKinsey actually committed the bad acts the articles is about.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > help firms sell drugs that literally end up killing people Keep in mind that's actually the best practice and it's what they were supposed to be doing. The problem isn't that they were selling drugs that were killing people, and it's that they were marketing them illegally and trying to get people hooked on them who didn't even need them in the first place.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  ”At the end of the day the worlds biggest companies are willing to knowingly take money from foreign governments to illegally spread propaganda to influence elections” Are you talking about Facebook? There’s no proof of this happening and bundling it with legitimate concerns makes it easy to dismiss all of the arguments.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
b_tterc_p 8y ago
No they’re about the same. The NYTimes seems to have a bone to pick with McK for some reason. Not to discredit any individual points, but the targeting seems odd.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Worth reading what McKinsey did in South Africa: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-south-africa-eskom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-sou... Considering they took that deal even over the objection of some of their partners seems to me that not everyone, even the top firms, are as craven.
- heyjudy 8y ago
  I knew of one ex- Morgan Stanley quant, who I purposely don't talk to anymore, because his department's product was economically strip-mining West African agriculture for a certain crop, while claiming to be helping. They helped themselves and cheated farmers and brokers with all sorts of BS.

spamizbad 8y ago

we’ll considering the tremendous damage the opioid crisis has wrought I think it’s fair to say it’s not a triviality.

Spooky23 8y ago

McKinsey invented the category in many ways and is the gold standard to some. It’s like how anything Apple is a thing.

pklee 8y ago
A book called "Lords of Strategy" tracks the consulting "apple" thing. It is a good read. Sorry for duplications. I think overall management consulting is a world ready to be distrupted (if not already). Regurgitation sold as overpriced thoughtware
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s really dilution of blame. Actually doing anything in a corporation is hard, paying McKinsey to do what they do makes it easier, therefore there is value.
- softwaredoug 8y ago
  It’s tough (speaking as a consultant at a smaller company). Large company procurement/legal basically limits the viable pool of competing consulting firms to those with sunk capital in their own big legal/procurement. And the big 4 management consulting firms have all perfected getting that large company’s client relationship and landing contract after contract. It’s the same reason the same big 4-5 federal contractors win most of the work. The sunk cost in needed bureaucracy is large, it’s hard for a small player to compete. The root issue is big co procurement has taken accountability away from the people who actually use and understand the services. So in my company’s case it’s common to start a relationship with a counterpart at a firm very willing to invest in our services. Sadly the procurement bureaucracy really gets in the way of progress making everything more expensive for both sides. If you’re Accenture and McKinsey you just (unethically in my opinion) sink the cost but then milk the relationship for all it’s worth.

bogomipz 8y ago

>"... are BCG, Bain, the consulting arms of the Big 4 any more ethical in what they will or won't do for a paying client? Your comment is little more than "whataboutism." The post is commentary on the nytimes story about how the Massachusetts Attorney General suing McKinsey and specific instances of McKinsey targeting a doctor's practice in their state. So yes there is good reason to single out McKinsey here as they are the defendant in a lawsuit. >"are these articles focused on McKinsey because they are the most schadenfreude-inducing among big management consulting firms (akin to the media outrage directed at Facebook)?" This is just an ad-hominem. Informing the public and reporting on issues affecting their society and community is exactly the role of journalism.

kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
I have noticed that most accusations of whataboutism are somewhat misplaced. It is not whataboutism to question why a certain company gets the brunt of journalistic targeting while similar other companies do not. If you disagree on the material claims, sure, feel free to point out your reasons, but accusing of whataboutism with just a vague defence of 'journalism', when it's clear that the field is rife with partial truths and outright deception, hardly puts your argument in good light.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  My comment is very clearly in response to the OP's questioning: >"are BCG, Bain, the consulting arms of the Big 4 any more ethical in what they will or won't do for a paying client?" This is literally asking "what about the other big 4 consulting companies?" There is nothing "misplaced" about my usage of the term here. The article is about a lawsuit in which a specific company - Mckinsey is named as a defendant which I also stated. So clearly I have actually provided a reason for my assertion. Lastly disproportionality of media coverage - of which the OP's does not provide any evidence of, does not make the lawsuit any less credible.
  - zaroth 8y ago
    I think you’ve totally missed the definition of “whataboutism”. When questioning the ethics of a specific firm in an industry, it’s relevant if they are behaving exactly the same as everyone else in the same industry. “Perdue chickens are kept in cages!” is flimsy journalism if every large scale chicken farm also keeps their chicken in cages, and the article fails to explain why Perdue is being singled out. Reporting on air pollution by cars and how it’s changed over the years, and responding that coal power also pollutes, is whataboutism because there’s no expectation of why the pollution level of one would be relevant to the other. Singling out BMW and talking about how much pollution those specific cars produce because they are more likely to be driven by white collar workers, without explaining if those cars are actually producing more pollution per mile, it would not be “whataboutism” to question - what about the pollution from other brands? Is BMW actually worse or do the people who drive them just make a juicy target?

will_brown 8y ago

Yes it is news worthy for the same reasons facebooks role in the election was news worthy, the same reason Goldman Sachs behavior was news worthy in the 2008 great recession. People hold these companies and their employees in such high esteem (to the point some people don’t thing articles should be published about their bad behavior, rather articles should be published about other firms hypothetically engaging in the same behavior if the companies in question didn’t). At the end of the day the worlds biggest companies are willing to knowingly take money from foreign governments to illegally spread propaganda to influence elections, help firms sell drugs that literally end up killing people, and sell their own investment clients toxic assets while offloading their own position on the same assets. You are right others may have engaged in the same behavior, but: 1. That’s not news worthy and 2. other firms likely would have actually suffered real consequences. Certain firms like Facebook and others continually receive bad press because they continually engage in bad behavior but keep on like it’s business as usual. In other words, the article is focused on McKinsey not because there is a grand conspiracy against McKinsey, but because McKinsey actually committed the bad acts the articles is about.

Alex3917 8y ago
> help firms sell drugs that literally end up killing people Keep in mind that's actually the best practice and it's what they were supposed to be doing. The problem isn't that they were selling drugs that were killing people, and it's that they were marketing them illegally and trying to get people hooked on them who didn't even need them in the first place.
malvosenior 8y ago
”At the end of the day the worlds biggest companies are willing to knowingly take money from foreign governments to illegally spread propaganda to influence elections” Are you talking about Facebook? There’s no proof of this happening and bundling it with legitimate concerns makes it easy to dismiss all of the arguments.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

b_tterc_p 8y ago

No they’re about the same. The NYTimes seems to have a bone to pick with McK for some reason. Not to discredit any individual points, but the targeting seems odd.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

Worth reading what McKinsey did in South Africa: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-south-africa-eskom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-sou... Considering they took that deal even over the objection of some of their partners seems to me that not everyone, even the top firms, are as craven.

heyjudy 8y ago
I knew of one ex- Morgan Stanley quant, who I purposely don't talk to anymore, because his department's product was economically strip-mining West African agriculture for a certain crop, while claiming to be helping. They helped themselves and cheated farmers and brokers with all sorts of BS.