Private consulting firms’ intervention in public health policymaking: An exploratory review

Abstract

Context: While there is ample research in the social sciences on the role of private consulting firms in public policy, there is little information about their intervention in managing public health crises and epidemics. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how much public administrations across the globe have been using these firms. The purpose of this exploratory review of the scientific literature is to identify research on the involvement of these firms in governing epidemics and health crises since 2000. Methods: This review investigates the following question: what research evidence about the role of these firms is there, and what research methods and analytical categories are used? Following the stages of the PRISMA methods, we identified 24 references since 2000. Findings: We classified authors’ analyses of the role played by those firms using three analytical categories: the management approach, the consultocracy phenomenon and the phenomenon of elite hybridization. Only two references were explicitly related to the work of consulting firms in the context of epidemics (e.g. COVID-19). The others focused on public health reforms. This finding confirms the scarcity of research evidence on the role played by consulting firms in the management of epidemics. Conclusions: This review reports on a blind spot of the scientific literature and calls for additional empirical research. Points for practitioners: Consulting firms’ intervention during epidemics remains a blind spot of academic research. The COVID-19 crisis prompted a significant growth of consulting firms’ intervention in health policymaking. Three analytical categories can be useful to study consulting firms’ interventions, namely: the management approach, the consultocracy phenomenon and the phenomenon of elite hybridization. The phenomenon of elite hybridization reflects a promising heuristic approach.