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<p>How and why do strategy consultancies prioritise graduates from elite universities, and is this practice doing them more harm than good? The association of top strategy firms with elite universities is well-known, but this study suggests that the practice is done more for signaling and ‘fit’ reasons than for recruiting outstanding talent. Using anonymous interviews with recruiters, partners, and consultants at strategy firms, and drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, this paper suggests that these practices may do more harm than good.</p>
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How and why do strategy consultancies prioritise graduates from elite universities, and is this practice doing them more harm than good? The association of top strategy firms with elite universities is well-known, but this study suggests that the practice is done more for signaling and ‘fit’ reasons than for recruiting outstanding talent. Using anonymous interviews with recruiters, partners, and consultants at strategy firms, and drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, this paper suggests that these practices may do more harm than good.

Elitism in Strategy Consulting: How Institutional Prestige Influences Recruitment

Management Consulting Journal

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

How and why do strategy consultancies prioritise graduates from elite universities, and is this practice doing them more harm than good? The association of top...

Elitism in Strategy Consulting: How Institutional Prestige Influences Recruitment

Published Online: Dec 26, 2021

Page range: 12 - 22

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/mcj-2020-0003

© 2020 Ioanna Mavridopoulou et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.