Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The MBA idiocies that ruin everything

So-called ‘efficiencies’ can utterly fail but no one who sticks to standard economic theory will be fired or even blamed

issue 06 May 2017

I rang a company’s call centre the other day, and the experience was exemplary: helpful, knowledgeable, charming. The firm was a client of ours, so I asked what they did to make their telephone operators so unbelievably good. ‘Um, to be perfectly honest, we probably overpay them.’

Their call centre was 20 miles from a large city.

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