The key to the functioning of the modern headless bureaucracy is that the ones making the decisions are not the ones deciding upon them.  A disconnect between the the decision and the decision maker: hence the role of the consultant (as well, the expert, the specialized team, outsourcing, diffuse and distant organizational arms). The consultant does not care about the overall end result of his decision, because he will not be there in the organization to witness the result. Furthermore, the manager who contracted the consultant can thus disavow and step away from the decision, stating his own ignorance and citing the superior knowledge of the consultant. In this way the decision can be cast as inevitable and unavoidable; it has to be this way, a higher authority has verified it, how can we, with our meager knowledge, contradict? Even if management knew full well of what the decision was likely to be, and even if *neither* side can truly conceive of what the eventual outcome of such a decision may be, the decision was always already inevitable. Thus do extremely stupid people make extremely stupid decisions and wield great power.