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"In partnership with the consulting firm Accenture, the researchers randomly assigned a management makeover to a handful of Indian textile firms, while at the s
by atdrummond 14y ago
"In partnership with the consulting firm Accenture, the researchers randomly assigned a management makeover to a handful of Indian textile firms, while at the same time following a set of control textile factories to benchmark the effects of good management."
It certainly doesn't seem as though there was a potential for this report to have been biased.
A more interesting report would have been for those consultants to have been compared not only against a control but also firms where executives had been taught basic management and business practices themselves. They very likely could have made similar productivity gains and perhaps without spending the normally ludicrous management consulting fees.
Of course I might be wrong - the consultants did such a great job running Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign.
- dangero 14y agoI don't think that would work although I'm only speculating as well. I think the reason that external consultants can work better is that they exist in a different political situation than most internal managers do. A lot of basic management skills are human nature or basic survival techniques such as being efficient, and even untrained managers probably have those, but internal managers just don't have the political situation where they feel they can propose changes and keep their job secure.
- mtrimpe 14y agoIndeed; this sounds like a perfect example of the Hawthorne effect [1] at work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect If they had compe