I think the "why so many consultancies" has at least a couple of drivers - one being the pension and tax/NI system, where an experienced specialist can suddenly become very expensive indeed to have on the books. So cut 'em a deal on early retirement, and bring them back as consultants/contractors. And then maybe something, something, VAT.
This implies that a serious slug of consultancy firms are one-man bands, micro businesses, with the owner/operator being in their fifties/sixties. May be older, if they're really enjoying it.
The other driver would be regulatory or technological changes. There'd be a set of employees who would have a first mover advantage, and be able to rake it in due to a demand/supply imbalance by leaving the employer and setting up on their own as soon as. Or, there's MiFiD II and research houses.
This gives a set where the owner strikes out alone around the age of 30-ish. Likely sectors would be HR including recruitment, IT, marketing, accounting, general management. Probably still one-man bands, geographically limited.
However, at a guess, that second set is more likely to shift from micro to small, and probably survive longer, and shift out of the Old Rectory to Ye Olde Bank Branch.
If there is a problem, then the first group can be solved - dick about with the tax system, job done. Ahem.
The second group, you might not be able to do that much about - save for wandering into Niven's Gil the ARM territory, or Herbert's McKie & BuSab. Tricky, but see the whole AI regulations issue. Then again, let us not go there right now.
Then there's possibly a third group - which might be more interesting, in that it might hint at a structural issue. It's also annoying, as it's beginning to look as if I might actually have to pony up some cash for the book, at the very least.
Anyway, it boils down to "I don't know, more research needed, maybe it'll go critical tomorrow", but I suspect your cybernetics/information processing model doesn't fit. It's an OCP.
What is it about the British and American administrative state that compels domain experts to become private sector consultants? Conservative and Libertarian belief systems that are in direct conflict with how Homo sapiens achieves group functional outcomes. No society can function well without a basic level of interpersonal and institutional trust. Britain and the United States have devolved into low trust societies because Conservatives and Libertarians have destroyed the ability of the administrative states to adapt and evolve in a functional way.
Can't remember the name of the book offhand, but the ascendance of Silicon Valley has been blamed on California's refusal to enforce no-compete clauses. This creates precisely this outsourcing problem which you discuss. I suppose it is all contingent: do the higher-powered incentives of individual entrepreneurship outweigh the informational advantages of concentration?
I'd say the public-sector problem is different. The public sector simply does not want to pay enough, at least in the US. And it is also more bound by internal fairness norms, which conflict with market pay norms. The famous public-sector discount is real enough, but affects different kinds of workers differently. A lawyer or economist might take a bigger haircut because the work is more fun than private-sector work, but an IT person might not see things the same way.
Might another possibility be that the approach taken to management at large concerns in the UK makes individual contributors feel that either their human and emotional needs or their economic futures are better served by becoming a consultant, in spite of income prospectively being far less reliable?
The public sector in the UK has completely diminished the value of domain expertise. The only way to progress is to generalise and get good at Big L leadership. Domain experts stagnate at salaries much lower than you might think.
The civil service now says it wants experts but it still has a pay, progression and organisational culture completely antithetical to this objective.
I think the "why so many consultancies" has at least a couple of drivers - one being the pension and tax/NI system, where an experienced specialist can suddenly become very expensive indeed to have on the books. So cut 'em a deal on early retirement, and bring them back as consultants/contractors. And then maybe something, something, VAT.
This implies that a serious slug of consultancy firms are one-man bands, micro businesses, with the owner/operator being in their fifties/sixties. May be older, if they're really enjoying it.
The other driver would be regulatory or technological changes. There'd be a set of employees who would have a first mover advantage, and be able to rake it in due to a demand/supply imbalance by leaving the employer and setting up on their own as soon as. Or, there's MiFiD II and research houses.
This gives a set where the owner strikes out alone around the age of 30-ish. Likely sectors would be HR including recruitment, IT, marketing, accounting, general management. Probably still one-man bands, geographically limited.
However, at a guess, that second set is more likely to shift from micro to small, and probably survive longer, and shift out of the Old Rectory to Ye Olde Bank Branch.
If there is a problem, then the first group can be solved - dick about with the tax system, job done. Ahem.
The second group, you might not be able to do that much about - save for wandering into Niven's Gil the ARM territory, or Herbert's McKie & BuSab. Tricky, but see the whole AI regulations issue. Then again, let us not go there right now.
Then there's possibly a third group - which might be more interesting, in that it might hint at a structural issue. It's also annoying, as it's beginning to look as if I might actually have to pony up some cash for the book, at the very least.
Anyway, it boils down to "I don't know, more research needed, maybe it'll go critical tomorrow", but I suspect your cybernetics/information processing model doesn't fit. It's an OCP.
What is it about the British and American administrative state that compels domain experts to become private sector consultants? Conservative and Libertarian belief systems that are in direct conflict with how Homo sapiens achieves group functional outcomes. No society can function well without a basic level of interpersonal and institutional trust. Britain and the United States have devolved into low trust societies because Conservatives and Libertarians have destroyed the ability of the administrative states to adapt and evolve in a functional way.
Can't remember the name of the book offhand, but the ascendance of Silicon Valley has been blamed on California's refusal to enforce no-compete clauses. This creates precisely this outsourcing problem which you discuss. I suppose it is all contingent: do the higher-powered incentives of individual entrepreneurship outweigh the informational advantages of concentration?
I'd say the public-sector problem is different. The public sector simply does not want to pay enough, at least in the US. And it is also more bound by internal fairness norms, which conflict with market pay norms. The famous public-sector discount is real enough, but affects different kinds of workers differently. A lawyer or economist might take a bigger haircut because the work is more fun than private-sector work, but an IT person might not see things the same way.
Are you familiar with Mazzucato and Collington on this? Interesting work!
wrote a review of it! https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/69/conned/
Might another possibility be that the approach taken to management at large concerns in the UK makes individual contributors feel that either their human and emotional needs or their economic futures are better served by becoming a consultant, in spite of income prospectively being far less reliable?
The public sector in the UK has completely diminished the value of domain expertise. The only way to progress is to generalise and get good at Big L leadership. Domain experts stagnate at salaries much lower than you might think.
The civil service now says it wants experts but it still has a pay, progression and organisational culture completely antithetical to this objective.
Yeah, came across this stuff quite some time ago;
https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/publications/competency-framework/ and https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles, it's umm, what it is.