Rip-Off! The Scandalous Inside Story of the Management Consulting Money Machine ($19.62 paperback), by David Craig, is available as a free PDF download from the Simple-Talk website. I did wonder if it is an abridged edition, as the paperback says it has 320 pages, while the PDF has 167, but it appears to just be a formatting issue due to page size differences. David Craig is a UK author and the book concerns UK (and EU) business practices, but is relevant in the states as well (years ago I worked with a local television station - they had new managment consultants at least each year and the only sure thing is that current one's advice would contradict whatever the last one told them).Book Description
Who are management consultants? What power do they have? How can they charge so many millions for their services? Do they really deliver any value? Why do organisations use them? * Every single working day, British companies and the government pay over GBP30million for management consultants' advice * Each year Management Consultancy creates more millionaires than the National Lottery * A leading consultancy recently repaid USD54million to a client after allegedly defrauding that client * Confidential surveys show consultants believe that about half the work they do is of little value to clients and a further 20 per cent is "junk" At last, an insider takes the lid off Management Consulting and reveals how too often this vast and secretive business has become a licence to siphon off almost unlimited quantities of clients' money. In Rip-Off! the author shows that there can sometimes be truly great management consultancy. However, he also reveals how most of the world's major management consultancies have become vast and incredibly profitable factories churning out thousands of almost identical "warm bodies", whose time must be sold to clients, whether clients have problems to be solved or not.
Click HERE for the download.
