From my experience, I believe that many of the main consulting companies rely on fear and threats to keep employees under control..! what´s your opinion ?

I think you're working for the wrong manager / partner / company. In my experience, there are a few bad managers in every organisation who like to rule by fear, but they're generally the exception rather than the rule. If you're in an organisation that's characterised by a culture of fear, you should consider your options.Sure, there's pressure to meet your utilisation and profit targets in any consultancy. But these behaviours are normally incentivised using a carrot (called a bonus) rather than a stick (called a P45). Only serious underperformance merits a P45...

The real problem in consultancy is an absence of management rather than over-management. Too much task/delivery focus, lots of very talented people getting promoted quickly but who lack people management skills and experience.

Having worked for more than 1 "blue-chip" management consultancy, I somewhat agree with your statement. It depends on the culture of firm. This is probably more prevalent in your "up or out" firms. Look, you're working (and with competing) with the best and brightest in the world. Everybody performs well. So during annual, bi-annual, or quarterly performance evaluations where everyone is "forced-ranked", people wind up tending to focus on faults rather than successes...because pretty much everyone is good. This breeds a culture of fear...fear of performing at a A- or B+ level instead of A+, fear of a minor slip up getting blown out of proportion because everyone else performed flawlessly, etc.