Dangerous Company: management consultants and the businesses they save and ruin

The Story

Behind nearly every corporate merger and every downsizing or 're-engineering' effort of the last decade lurked a highly paid management consultant. Consultants promise results, but what kind of practices do they employ to achieve them?Written by two award-winning journalists, Dangerous Company tells the harrowing tale of a Fortune 500 company that spent $75 million on consulting contracts, only to see sales plummet from $1.3 billion to $319 million; explains how AT&T could spend half a billion dollars in consulting fees without any sign of progress; and exposes a consultant who provided government officials with information that helped send a former client to jail. You'll learn how Sears got turned around thanks to CEO Arthur Martinez's sophisticated and limited use of consultants, and how small, highly focused consulting firms are providing cost-effective, targeted advice and mounting a challenge to their larger competitors. Both a serious practical guide for any corporate citizen and a cautionary tale as exciting as a corporate thriller, Dangerous Company is certain to make the reader ask the critical question: What is the true price of advice, and who pays?