The Cost of Control: Speculation on the Impact of Management Consultants on Creativity in the BBC

It is often claimed that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is no longer as creative as it once was. Management consultants and the management methods they encourage are often held to blame. While managerialism has certainly been rampant in the BBC over the last decade, it is not clear that creativity has suffered in consequence. The paper compares current concerns about the BBC with very similar concerns voiced by Tom Burns some 40 years ago. The comparison allows the tentative conclusion that management consultants and their methods are a symptom rather than a cause. What threatens creativity, and has always threatened creativity, is managerial control. Heavy reliance on management consultants seems to indicate a determination to control that is likely to be inimical to creativity. With sufficient managerial control, trust becomes superfluous and professionalism is judged in terms of loyalty to the organisation—the difference, as Tom Burns noted long ago, between working for the BBC and working in the BBC.