The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise) - Softcover

McKenna, Christopher D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521757592 ISBN 13: 9780521757591

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

In The World's Newest Profession, Christopher McKenna offers a history of management consulting in the twentieth century. While management consulting may not yet be a recognized profession, the leading consulting firms have been advising and reshaping the largest organizations in the world since the 1920s. This groundbreaking study details how the elite consulting firms, including McKinsey and Booz Allen, expanded after U.S. regulatory changes during the 1930s, how they changed giant corporations, nonprofits, and the state during the 1950s, and why consultants became so influential in the global economy after 1960. As they grew in numbers, consultants would introduce organizations to "corporate culture" and "decentralization" but they faced vilification for their role in the Enron crisis and for legitimating corporate blunders. Through detailed case studies based on unprecedented access to internal files and personal interviews, The World's Newest Profession explores how management consultants came to be so influential within our culture and explains exactly what consultants really do in the global economy.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher D. McKenna is Reader in Business History and Strategy at the Said Business School, University of Oxford.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521757592
• ISBN 13: 9780521757591
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 394