Global Consulting Agencies’ Scandals as a Display of a Failure of Contemporary Narratives about Capitalism

Abstract

The economic and cultural position of big consulting companies has been growing for the last 50 years. Therefore their activities can be perceived as a crucial part of a phenomenon popularized by American sociologist Charles Wright Mills called “Power Elites''. Today global consulting firms create a problem of global disparity not only by helping elites snowball higher income by means such as tax avoidance, but in sustaining the privileged class with access to power and status. The aim of this paper is to analyze the subject of famous scandals surrounding major consulting agencies as a glimpse into ideological inaccuracies of contemporary capitalism.

In recent years however, many scandals concerning the reliability and knowledgeability of the “Big 4” or “Big 3” consulting firms groups have seen the light of day. This raises a question whether the consulting firms' scandals reflect on the negative mechanisms of modern capitalism itself? Specifically, can we pinpoint the phenomenon of consulting firms as the symbolic failure of neoliberalism doctrines? The analysis will examine this in the context of failure studies theory within the framework of neoliberalism, as presented in the “Routledge International Handbook of Failure.” It will consider both classical and modern sociological concepts coined by figures such as Pierre Bourdieu, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Charles Wright Mills, along with empirical evidence of those scandals. “The Big Con” by Marianna Mazzucato and Rosie Clington serves as a main point of reference for the argumentation.