PricewaterhouseCoopers – “Beware of complacency and strong territory identity”

Pros

The PwC brand name still carries a decent reputation and attracts good consultants.
PwC tries to provide a differentiated service offering through a wide range of business consulting services (supply chain, outsourcing, finance function effectiveness, commercial due diligence etc).
Efforts made by Leadership to rebuild a consulting practice are largely ahead of most other Big 4s (except Deloitte which smarlty never spun out their consulting practice).
PwC is in most countries rewarding staff with higher salaries than competitors, and also provides a nice working environment (offices, packages and benefits etc)
PwC makes significant investments in training and education, in particualr with regional training events.

Cons

PwC still continues to operates as a network of firms, with very little incentives for collaboration and sharing beyond territories' borders. This model is now outdated and a number of competitors have made significant progress in building regional or global p&l models (EY, Deloitte in particular). PwC's leadership seems incapable of motivating such moves and is being outflanked by some territory partnerships desire to remain independent at all cost (China is a good example). This sometimes seems to be based on complete irrational arrogance and is deeply frustrating when multinational clients are being services in particular.
Knowledge sharing is not up to the expected standard of a firm of this size.

Advice to Senior Management

PwC's senior management should be more aware of what competitors are doing and not be complacent on the current oligopoly situation of the Big 4s. The firm has a number of weaknesses that need improvement to stay ahead of the game (knowledge management and collaboration have huge gaps, and the lack of a consistent vision for building a successful consulting practice is detrimental to all staff).